Where The Story Ends
by my.name.is.mary
Summary: The ceremony was on a sunny September morning. She still was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Then, her hazel eyes found mine, and I knew, I would always love her... Sequel to My Life Would Suck Without You.
1. Don't Let Me Go

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series, any its character or settings, all you recognize belongs to J. K. Rowling.**

**A/N: So, after much thought and many requests, I decided to write a sequel to My Life Would Suck Without You. I believe it'll be only a few chapters long, 3 or 4. This is a little short, but I hope you like it enough to want to keep reading. It's in Scorp's point of view, just like before. So please forgive me (You'll understand when you read, why I'm asking for forgiveness), and happy reading!**

"**Don't Let Me Go"**

The ceremony was on a sunny September morning. She still was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her bright red hair was tied up in a neat bun while a white lace veil fell in front of her porcelain face. Then, when Mr. Weasley uncovered his daughter's face before giving her away, her hazel eyes found mine, and I knew, I would always love her.

I watched as she smiled, looking up to the brunette bloke in front of her. He held one of her hands and kissed it before they both turned to face the priest in charge of marrying them.

I watched as the old man spoke solemn words. I watched all the guests smile at the beautiful scenery before them. I watched Mrs. Weasley shed a tear while she clutched her husband's hand. But none of it seemed real to me.

Once again, I asked myself what I was here for. I knew this would happen. I knew it since I first got an invitation. I knew I would end up watching from far behind, hidden from a reality I had turned blind to since Rose and I last saw each other.

Many years ago, I had promised myself not to cry again. But at a time like this, my eyes burned with soon to come tears. Tears I refused to shed in front of her. I knew everyone there was watching her and her brunette bloke. No one seemed to notice my humiliation and utter heartbreak. But I still felt humiliated and heartbroken.

I deserved it nevertheless. I had let her go. It was my fault. I was the one to blame.

I had been a _bloody idiot_.

I kept watching, with which purpose, I didn't know. Maybe, the more I watched, the more it would hurt, and then, maybe I would be able to accept it.

"It doesn't have to be like this," a voice I no longer hated said behind me.

"I refuse to make her unhappy again, Albus."

She deserved happiness. She deserved someone to give her what I couldn't. And if the arse she was holding hands with was it, then there was nothing I could do.

"Do you, Claude Dubois, take Rose Weasley as your eternal partner, in sickness and health, to protect and love, until death parts you?" the priest then spoke.

"I do," the brunette bloke replied.

He then took a silver ring from his best man, a ginger that wasn't part of the Weasley family, and turned back to Rose. She smiles as he slid the ring through her finger. They, along all the guests watched silently a second, before the priest spoke again.

I knew what he was saying, but I couldn't hear it.

In the wizarding world, marriage is a lot more sacred than it is in the muggle world. The rings exchanged are fabricated by elder goblins, designed to obey the wearer's emotions. In weddings, the exchange is a moment of high tension. When a ring falls off, like passing right through the bone and flesh, it is a sign that who placed the ring doesn't love the wearer.

I still had once tiny bit of hope until that moment. I had hoped the bloke didn't really love her enough, but the ring had stayed in place.

That alone was enough to open my eyes to such a horrible reality.

She belonged with someone else. I had lost her forever.

Not wanting to keep torturing myself, I pulled away from a hand I hadn't notice on my shoulder, and turned around to leave

As I walked away, I felt the tears fall down, and for a desperate second, I thought loudly to myself 'Don't let me go'. I prayed she'd listen, how, I didn't know, but I prayed still.

I would never know if she heard me.


	2. Falling Apart

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series, any its character or settings, all you recognize belongs to J. K. Rowling.**

**A/N: So, here it is, the new chapter. This one explains what most of the reviews have been wondering. It's rather short, but I hope you still like it.. Ehm, for those who don't know or don't remember, Baron is Scorpius' owl.. Anyhow, thanks for subscribing to the story to those who did and thanks for everyone who reviewed! It really is your support that keeps me writing.**

**So, here you go.. Happy reading!**

"**Falling Apart"**

_'Claude Dubois and Rose Weasley_

_cordially invite you to join them on_

_September 1st to celebrate the unity_

_of their lives in holy matrimony.'_

I read the white, lacy edged wedding invitation, twice and felt utter shock spreading throughout every cell of my body.

I let myself fall onto the black leather couch in front of the fireplace, and suddenly felt nauseous.

I read the invitation once more, not believing anything at all.

She was getting _married_. Married to _someone else_.

I don't know how much time it took for the shock to wear out. All I know is that the flames at the fireplace had been large and vivid when I first sat down, and by the time I decided to sleep my surrender off, they were was nothing more than cold ashes.

I walked into my small bedroom and changed from my office wear into just a pair of pyjama pants and dropped to the bed. I didn't bother using a pillow or tugging at the sheets to cover myself. I was as tired as I could get, but my eyes wouldn't close. I was afraid that if they did, I would dream of her and her marrying a, most likely, bloody moron.

The last time I had had a hard time drifting to sleep, it had been almost three years ago, when she left and took my will to keep living with her. I stared intently at the ceiling, remembering that horrible week, and wondering why it had all ended the way it did.

...

_I knew the crowd was cheering, but I couldn't hear them. The excitement, the adrenaline shooting throughout my entire body was deafening me. I lifted my arms in sign of victory in mid air. I almost feel, but I didn't find it in myself to mind. I laughed out loud and yelled in joy, while almost my entire team flew towards me._

_The Quidditch World Cup Semi-final was officially over, and we had won. Ireland was now facing Egypt for the title of the World's Champion._

_We all reached the ground, where Cervi, our seeker, was waiting with the snitch at hand and screaming his lungs out. We all winged our arms around one another and jumped in excitement just when the crowd became audible for me._

_I could suddenly hear their cheers, I could hear millions of people sharing the same feeling of triumph I felt. I, then, glanced at them, at all those faces that had supported us for the past month, since the Championship started, trying to find the one that had supported me the last six years._

_'She's not here' I reminded myself and suddenly the sweet feeling of satisfaction was washed away in mere seconds._

_No, she wasn't there. She was at the hospital, she had an important surgery to perform._

_I watched the faces that were still celebrating, with their green scarves shinning in the artificial lights, but this time their excitement couldn't touch me._

_They all chanted for us, and the rest of the team chanted back, thanking them all. I knew the words, but found no will to sing along._

_This wasn't the first time Rose had missed a game. She had probably missed over half of the games we had played this championship._

_I tried my best not to get caught up in resentment, but lifting my arms and proclaiming back my excitement felt forced, even fake. So I dropped my arms and stared at the audience, pretending I was in awe by their support and not sulking about the fact that my girlfriend didn't seem to care about me at all._

"_Oi, Malfoy!" I heard then really close to me. "Let's celebrate!"_

_I looked at Cervi's excited face, and decided that celebrating was exactly what I needed to forget my disappointment._

_It didn't work though._

_Four hours later, after dropping a really drunk Maximillian Cervi at his Dublin flat, I came back home, not only to Rose, but to that lousy disappointed feeling that had been drowning me for some time now._

"_We won today," I told the ginger's back just as I closed the flat's door behind me and kicked my shoes off._

"_That's great," she replied distractedly._

_I watched her from the foyer as she shuffled some papers here and there. She was still wearing the same dress she had left in last night, when her shift had started. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun and her brows were pulled together in a concentrated frown. A frown I was growing tired of._

"_I was thinking that maybe you'd like to come to the Finals," I said slightly colder than I had meant._

_I watched quietly at her reaction. Lately anything I said had set her off rather easily._

_She didn't start yelling though. She just dropped the pen she had been writing with, gave up on the paperwork and sighed such a heavy sigh that I actually felt guilty for saying what I said._

"_My patient died on the table today," she said quietly as her back touched the back of the chair in a sign of utter defeat._

"_I'm sorry," I said, still by the foyer._

_I meant to move in closer, hold her even. But just as anything I did annoyed her, I had found myself reluctant to comfort her anymore at times like this._

"_It doesn't matter anymore anyway."_

_She didn't say much else after that. She just stood up from the chair, walked up to me, kissed me on the cheek and mumbled a depressing 'good night'._

_I watched her go into the bedroom, before I walked up to an empty couch by the fireplace and let myself sink into it. I stared at nothing while I tried to fight this impulse to just stay and sleep on the couch tonight._

_For a few months now, Rose and I had been drifting apart for a reason I couldn't figure out yet. We no longer told each other 'I love you' as much as we used to. We no longer slept holding each other. We no longer spoke meaningfully. We were starting to get tired of one and another and it felt like rubbish._

_I knew she still loved me, and I knew I still loved her, but it was getting harder each time to prove it._

_She no longer seemed interested in what I did. She spent every time longer and longer hours at the Hospital. By now, half of the times I came home to an empty flat. Some days, specially on weekends, my only company was Baron. And instead of talking about it with Rose, I had started getting used to it._

_It wasn't fair though, to none of us. I deserved to feel good at home. I wasn't supposed to feel as lonely as I was. It almost felt like we were room-mates instead of lovers._

_I knew she probably felt the same, but as terrible as it was, none of us bothered taking the first step. None of us bothered with trying to fix our failing relationship._

_I didn't quite understand when it all started falling apart, and as hard as it was to admit it, we were crumbling down._

_Feeling sadder as each of my thoughts left a new drop of poison, I turned my head to stare at the slightly open door Rose was hidden behind._

_Maybe it was just a temporary thing. Maybe by the next week it would all be fine, and we could be happy again._

_Optimism had never been my cup of tea. But for the first time in a long time, I felt we still had a chance, and I wasn't going to put it down. Not this time._

_So sighing in encouragement, I stood up from the couch and walked into the bedroom. I took off my sloppy looking jacket, and what was still left of my Quidditch uniform. I put a pair of pyjama bottoms and went into the bathroom to wash my face and teeth. When I got out, Rose was facing me, her eyes were open, and she was staring at me. I could see uncertainty on her face. She was probably wondering the same thing I had been asking myself not long ago._

_I looked away from her and walked over to the other side of the bed. I laid down onto a soft pillow and almost instantly, I turned to my side and buried my face in Rose's long, soft red hair, while I swung an arm over her and held her close to me._

_At a moment like this, I wish I never had to let go again._

_She then shrugged me off slightly and turned to face me before she too swung a thin arm over me and buried her face in the crook of my neck. As I held her tightly I was more convinced than ever that we could make it._

_We would be just fine._

...

I laid there, on the middle of my now single bed, as I closed my eyes, trying to control myself.

I had been such a fool to believe just one night on the good side of the island was enough to save whatever we had. Our cracks laid way deeper than I had thought. I didn't even quite know when I had let it all slip, let alone when Rose had started losing hope in us.

Just as I had gotten my hopes up, the universe was plotting against us. It all ended tragically later that week, on one sad Friday night.

...

"_Al is getting married this Sunday," Rose said during a rather quiet dinner._

"_We should send him something nice," I replied, not bothering to look up from my plate._

"_We should go to the wedding," she said coldly, and I then, did look up._

_I stared at her for a few seconds before I replied, still coldly._

"_We can't, I have one last practice before Finals that day."_

_She didn't say anything to that, and we went back to the tense silence that had fallen upon us most of the nights we had dine together._

_Four days before I had been so sure we were on our way to recovery, but it all had gone to oblivion by the next day, when Rose went back to the Hospital and didn't come back until tonight._

"_He asked me to be his best man," she said after a while, just as we cleared the table._

"_That's ridiculous," was all I replied while I kept doing the dishes._

_I probably shouldn't have said that the way I did._

"_It isn't," she said coldly, and slowly her voice started raising. "It's an important day and he's scared. He needs me."_

_I didn't reply to that. I had forgotten their relationship was odd enough for Albus to request such thing from Rose._

"_You should go," I said after all the dishes were done, and I had turned to face her while I dried my hands with an already damp towel._

_She stared at me for a few seconds, her hazel eyes as cold as they had been for too long now._

"_We should go together," she said looking away from me._

_I knew why she said that. I knew all she wanted was for us to cut ourselves a slack and let us spend some time together, without the pressure of both of our careers. But for some reason, I didn't quite think about that, and instead took it the wrong way._

_She wasn't the only one susceptible these days._

"_What do you want me to do, Rose?" I asked rather aggressively, while I dropped the towel onto the table in front of her. "Leave my team to die just so you can go convince your cousin he's not making the biggest mistake of his life?"_

_She didn't say anything right away, she just looked me in the eye, and I could see she felt disappointed in me and the way I was taking the matter._

"_Is that what you think?" she asked looking away from me, as her brows pulled together. "That him marring Anabelle is a mistake?" _

"_No. The mistake is getting married at his age."_

_After that, I intended to walk away from it all, before we got caught up in another pointless argument about bloody marriage._

"_Then which is the proper age to marry, Scorpius? Thirty, Forty, never?" Rose started before I could reach the living room._

"_Just leave it, Rose," I replied, not feeling like discussing the matter any further._

"_I'm done," was all she said as she walked past me fuming._

"_Done with what exactly?" I asked, my voice a little too loud for comfort._

"_This!" She yelled back at me before opening the wood panel that lead to her study._

"_If you're tired, stop bringing it up!"_

"_You're such a hypocrite," she said a second later, as her hazel eyes narrowed and her cheeks blushed in anger._

"_Pardon me?"_

"_You-are-such-a-HYPOCRITE!" She yelled again, stomping her left foot onto the wooden floor at the last word. "If I remember correctly you were the one who wanted to spend the rest of his life with me! You were the one who said you'd marry me someday! And I was foolish enough to believe you and let you drag me into this!"_

_Without thinking about it, I walked over to her and trapped her between my arms as I slammed both of my hands against the door behind her._

"I_ dragged you into this?" She had pissed me off beyond belief. "_You_ came here on your own, must I remind you?"_

"_No!" she replied, pushing me away and marching over to the bedroom._

_She then slammed the door shoot and locked it, leaving me outside, in the living room, as mad as as I had never felt before._

_Still furious, and completely unwilling to stay in such poisonous environment, I grabbed my jacket from the coat rack by the door and disapparated._

_I spent about three, maybe four hours, at The Leaky Cauldron, trying to, probably, drown myself in alcohol. The old bar tender, Tom, despite my reluctance to listen, kept telling me stories about back in the day, when an eleven-year-old Harry Potter had first walked into the bar, and from then on until when he had been forced to close the establishment for security issues by the time the Second Great Wizarding War was on the verge of breaking loose._

_I only remembered the first couple of sentences he had said when I sat down._

"_Long time, no see, young Malfoy. How long has it been? Six years?"_

_After the first glass of firewhisky touched my hand, it all was blurry. It wasn't only the alcohol though, I really didn't want to listen. I had other things to think about, such as why was I pretending that Rose and I still had something worth saving._

_Because we didn't. We hadn't had anything for some time now._

_I had been a fool to believe that what I felt for someone when I was one stupid teenager would endure the years. Time changes people, I of all people should have realized that before._

_I loved Rose with everything I had, but for some reason staying together felt lonesome and even wrong at times. I didn't think she nor I were solely guilty. We both had changed, we both had found our own paths, but we had been tied to one another for too long to realize we were holding the other back._

_I thought that maybe, we wanted different things, and that was the reason everything was falling apart._

_Ever since Rose came to Ireland, a few months after we graduated from Hogwarts, we had had a plan. We had talked it through many times, enough to convince anyone that not one decision had been rushed._

_We were supposed to marry two years ago, just by the time Rose had been promoted to an Attending Healer, and I had been named Captain of the National Ireland Selection. We were supposed to spend six months in Bali for our honeymoon and we planned to spend three more years by ourselves. We were going to buy a country house back in England so our children could see the rest of the family often enough._

_We were supposed to have three girls and a boy: Astoria Jean, Danielle Maxine, Francesca Marie and Ronald Billius Jr. They were supposed to attend Hogwarts, and we were supposed to go back to England by the time they had to go to school. We were supposed to adopt a puppy. We would spend Christmas with the Weasleys and New Years with my father and the Notts one year, and the other way around the next. We would spend summertime travelling around the world. By the time of my retirement, I was supposed to fund my own Quidditch Academy and build a new wing at St. Mungo's for my wife. We were supposed to grow old for many years and die at 90. We would have plenty of grandchildren and memories enough to last us another lifetime._

_We had Plan A. We had no Plan B._

_We never contemplated we'd get tired of each other. We shouldn't have to think of any other scenery, but I guessed that was why things went wrong for almost everyone: No one ever thinks about the lows. We were all stupid enough to believe in bloody optimism._

"_What are you doing?" I asked Rose's back three and a half hours later, when I had decided to come back home._

"_Packing" She simply replied, not bothering to turn around to face me._

"_Why?"_

_I leaned on the doorway that opened to her study, while she kept shoving book after book in a small handbag. The sobering potion I asked Tom before I left the bar hadn't kicked in yet, and I felt slightly dizzy._

"_Because I'm going to Al's wedding," she replied, this time closing the handbag._

_She then walked past me and into the bedroom to get her purple travelling bag. I let her get to the living room before I spoke again, still leaning against the study doorway._

"_Rose, can't we just talk?" As I spoke, I could feel the potion starting to kick in._

"_I'm done talking to you Scorpius," Rose said, taking a few papers from the table were our keys laid._

"_I don't want you to go back to England upset with me," I said, walking up to her._

"_Don't," she shrugged me away when I tried to put my arms around her so she wouldn't leave._

"_Rose, please."_

"_No. No more 'Rose, please'"_

_She then looked at me in the eye and for a moment I felt like the legendary eleven-year-old that could never find in himself to look directly at those hazel eyes._

"_I'm so sick of this Scorp," Rose spoke quietly as I looked away. "I'm so sick of us wanting different things and keep pretending that we don't."_

_I tried taking the step that would close all distance between us at the moment, but she held her hand to my chest, keeping me away._

"_Rose..."_

"_Have you stopped loving me Scorpius, is that it?" she asked with a shaky voice as she stared at the wooden floor beneath our feet and still enabling me to come any closer. "Because the boy I feel in love with six years ago would have done anything for me, even leaving me to be happy without him."_

_I felt like it my entire world was crumbling around me after that. I tried not to snap right then and there. Was she seriously asking me to let her go just like that?_

"_Or is that what _you_ want? That I leave _you_ to be happy without _me_?" she then asked while a lonely tear fell, leaving a wet trace on her cheek, and I understood it all._

"_Of course not."_

_I tried to close the distance between us once more and hold her, but I couldn't. This time it wasn't her hand that wouldn't let me, it was something else, something within me that wouldn't let me move._

"_Then why does it feel like it?" she asked, this time her voice was completely shattered._

"_I don't know."_

_At my response, a few more tears left damp her soft skin. I watched as Rose took a few steps back from me before completely turning around and started walking over to the foyer, the flat's Dissaparating Point._

"_I understand that after Luke and Elle got divorced you've grown scared of marriage, I get it." She said, facing me one last time, and I could swear there was still a glimpse of hope in her crying voice. "But I thought you knew that could never happen to us."_

_I tried to give her the reason she was asking me for to stay, but I honestly didn't believe we had, at this point, a chance to save ourselves._

"_But it is."_

_She didn't even give me enough time to regret what I had said. Her hazel eyes narrowed and her heartbreak was replaced by anger and disappointment, before she spoon on the spot and disapparated right away._

...

That was the last time I'd see her.

After she left, it all felt like she had taken everything I was with her. The next day felt like I was stuck in an unchanging world, an universe deprived of the passing of time. I couldn't stand staying at that flat pretending it was still my home when I knew there was nothing there that meant anything to me anymore.

So, by Sunday I had cleared all my clothes, foot wear and Quidditch gear and left. I moved to a small apartment, almost at the other side of town, before our last Quidditch practice before the Finals.

By Monday night, the rest of my team was celebrating their new title as Champions of the World. A title that in theory, was also mine to claim, but it felt like there was no room for nothing more than regret and sadness.

I left the celebration unnoticed and decided to get lost in the city, the muggle part of it, of which I didn't know a thing about. But I didn't care. Nothing felt the same without her. Quidditch had no meaning anymore to me. Eating seemed like a mere whim, sleeping like a luxury and happiness like a long shot.

So I vanished from everything that had been my life in the years to come. I quit the Unit with an excuse of an explanation. I left the flat to rot in abandonment and my family to drown in uncertainty about my welfare. I detached myself from everything and everyone who had ever been part of my life when Rose was with me.

I tried hating her for leaving me broken in a million pieces, but that didn't work.

I tried to get in touch with her, but every time I decided to Apparate by The Burrow or Grimmauld Place, a small annoying voice in my head told me I would only be wasting time.

She had left for a reason, and it wasn't that she had stopped love me, but that she had decided not to keep being unhappy by my side.

I kept staring at the ceiling as I felt my eyes water.

It seemed she had found someone who did make her happy. Who would give her all I couldn't. Whom she'd spend the rest of her life with, with no regrets.

I knew the wedding invitation meant I was being asked to go, but I seriously doubted neither Rose nor Claude had sent it. Rose and I hadn't spoken since that horrible night and I had never met her fiancé. Besides, which groom would want their bride's ex-boyfriend at their wedding?

As I laid on my back, I asked myself if I wanted to go.

No, it would be torture to witness her making such a commitment to someone else. But I needed to know if she was really happy, if she had been right to leave me. I wanted to see her smile like she used to, when we were still in love.

I didn't have to attend the ceremony, but I needed to see her once more before her hazel eyes fell upon some other bloke forever.

I had let her go to be happy without me, and so, I needed to make sure she was truly happy.


	3. Shadows And Regrets

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series, any its character or settings, all you recognize belongs to J. K. Rowling.**

**A/N: I know, I know, I'm late! And I'm so, so sorry for it. I had my hands tied, I had a birthday party to plan for my nephew, he turned two! :3**

**Anyhow, I hope you forgive my tardiness, I didn't mean to take so long. Ehm, well this chapter it's still in Scorpius' POV, but next will be Rose's. So, I have decided that I will write a fifth chapter for the close up, all 'scenes' for the next two chapters have been laid down, and all I have to do now is to get in there and... write.**

**But let's not worry about that yet, and let me wish you a happy reading!... And don't forget to review! Pretty please? :)**

"**Shadows and Regrets"**

"I have a surprise for you tonight," a sweet, female voice said very close to my ear.

"A surprise?" I asked distractedly.

It had been only 10 minutes since I had arrived at work, and my boss' secretary was already harassing me.

I had been working at a muggle translating office for three years now, when I had finally decided I had to deprive my world of my existence if I wanted to leave unnoticed.

Since I had stepped into this cage of glass walls and hardwood floors, all the females working here had prayed on me like vultures. It seemed like muggles weren't as used to someone that looked like me as the wizarding world was. After all, Malfoys had been around for a while and were rather known, so silvery blond hair wasn't that surprising back in magical territory.

"Yes," Amanda kept going, "It involves whipped cream, strawberries and very little clothes."

She smiled at me with a pair of hot pink coloured lips, as she narrowed her dull brown eyes in a worthless attempt to look seductive.

"Not interested," I replied coldly.

I really wasn't. Not anymore.

I must admit that I wasn't exactly a victim in this kind of situations. Yes, they all prayed on me, but I took a few of their offers. Amanda had barely made up her mind on giving me bolder signs of interest. We had had a few nights of passion in the past two weeks, but they never got further than that. To all I said the same 'I'm not emotionally available', which was true. Since Rose, I hadn't had the heart to care for anyone else. No one seemed that attractive, or interesting at all. Amanda, for example, was pretty fit, with a long flowing mass of honey blonde hair and a rather sweet voice. But her body would never compare to Rose's perfectly freckled one. Her hair would never come close to being as attractive as Rose's flaming red waves. Her brown eyes would never make my heart stop like Rose's bright hazel orbs, and her voice would never surpass the red-head's smooth, velveted voice.

"That's not what you said last night," Amanda whispered in my ear, just as our boss, Michael Rathbone, was walking by my cubicle.

"I changed my mind this morning," I replied before standing from my chair and walking behind Mr. Rathbone.

I had changed my mind just minutes after we had been together at her apartment. By midnight, I had sneaked my way out of her bed and went back home, where I got the horrible news of Rose's marriage.

"Mr. Rathbone, may I have a word with you?" I asked the slightly over-weight old man a few feet ahead of me.

"Sure, Malfoy," he replied without bothering to turn around to meet my gaze. "Walk with me."

I followed the almost bold, forty-year-old translator through what seemed like an infinite row of wooden cubicles. Not so different from my school years, I could feel all eyes on my back as I walked by my co-workers.

In the past years, I hadn't exactly tried befriending anyone or making some sort of bond with any of them. The only relationships I had, where all with women and were based in one-night stands. It seemed that just as in school, the rest of live follows that particular rule that no matter if you're outgoing or not, you're going to get talked about anyway.

I hadn't bother going to office dinners on casual Fridays and it seemed that my co-workers found that odd, which led them to behave the same way teenagers did back in Hogwarts, and just stare at me whenever I walked by and chitchat in low voices about whatever was wrong with me.

"What is it, boy?" Mr. Rathbone then asked and as he walked over to his chair by the end of the glass office I hadn't realized we had reached already.

He motioned me to sit down in the leather chair in front of his desk, and so I did, knowing that it wasn't really necessary. I wasn't staying much longer.

"Where are you going?" Amanda asked me five minutes later, when I got back to my cubicle and took my briefcase.

"Home," was all I said as I turned the computer off, wondering why I had bothered turning it on in the first place.

"I'll come by later then!" I heard the secretary say loudly as I walked my way to the door.

She could come by, but she wouldn't find anyone at that grey and cold apartment.

The reason I had to have a word with Mr. Rathbone was that I wanted to ask the weekend off. I told the middle aged muggle an old friend of mine was getting married and I had to attend the wedding. After laughing loudly at me for not really believing I could have friends, let alone old ones, the despicable man said he could not let me go at such busy time for the company. I didn't bother fighting his decision, I was a wizard. Essentially, I could do whatever I pleased and no one would notice. I thought of using the 'Obliviate' spell on him and the rest of the office, but I had to come back after the wedding, I still didn't want to go back to my old life. I was comfortable in the muggle world, despite all the reasons I had not to be. But no one knew me here and I would always have the upper hand due to magic. So I just cast an confusing spell and made him agree to give me the weekend off.

And so off I was.

After getting out of the glass office building, I turned left and walked down the busy Irish avenue that lead to the same alley I had come from and disapparated back to my apartment.

Once I got there, I took a medium sized luggage bag and enchanted it to fit whatever I threw in it. I packed a few clothes and hygiene equipment. I looked around the apartment and noticed that with my clothes and a few more things gone, the place looked like no one had lived there for a while. It hadn't never really been a home to me, so it looked like what it was, just a temporary refuge.

Not really willing to think about my lack of attachment to the place I was occupying, I took the bag, headed to the Disapparating point by the door and turned on the spot.

**.**

**OOO**

**.**

I Apparated at a road I hadn't been on since one wonderful Christmas night six years ago. I stared ahead, at the dark stoned mansion about a mile away from the iron, slender bars of the gate that kept all unwanted company away.

Despite the fact things had been fine for quite some time now, I hadn't come back here once. I never really paused to ask myself why, and truth be told, I still didn't know. Maybe it was because of the memories the place held, which weren't the best. The relationship between my father and I had improved to unmeasurable degrees, but there were still awful moments tainting our record, moments that had all taken place here. I tried not to remember that bitter taste in my mouth every time I had crossed the iron doors in front of me as I walked ahead. The doors opened right away, and I walked in.

I knew I could have apparated at the Disapparation Point inside the manor, but I had gotten used to walking long distances throughout the last three years, one mile more wouldn't kill me. Besides I hadn't notified my father I was coming, so apparating just like that, would have been rather rude of me.

As I walked the vast green esplanades that lead to the manor, I smiled at the reminder of how useful such a large yard had been during my childhood. I remembered being five or six years old, flying around my mother's flowers all day long, or just laying on the grass looking up at the greys skies during Autumn seasons.

I walked ahead under the bright sun, while a warm breeze shook my hair and travelling cloak. Soon, I was at the Manor's large dark oak doors. It had been a long while since I hadn't touch my fingertips to the delicate design dressing the doors. I traced the thin lines down to the golden, slender knob and turned it, opening a door that wasn't used to being opened by hand.

I walked into the foyer, and unlike the last time I had been there, the heavy velveted curtains that usually kept the sun from creeping through were drawn back. Each window looked like a fountain of light, illuminating every piece of furniture and all portraits in the room. I placed my bag down by the door, and completely taken aback by the foyer's new look, I walked ahead, to the manor's main study.

"I see you've taken a liking to sunlight lately,"

I watched the old, silvery blonde wizard sitting by a dark wooden desk at the other side of the room, look up at the sound of my voice.

"Scorpius," Father greeted me with an unreadable expression that soon enough turned into an almost smirk. "Long time, no see, son."

I walked over to the chair in front of his desk as he watched me with that steely gaze of his, but unlike all those years ago, the gaze didn't feel cold, it felt more like a quiet 'welcome home' gesture.

"What brings you around, boy?" Father asked going back to his papers.

I didn't quite reply, I just shrugged when he looked up back at me, seeing I as I didn't answer. He stared at me intently, like he was searching a reason for such a lacking response. A few seconds later, he gave up on staring at me for an answer and went back to his work. He did not resume his writing like I had expect though. He, surprisingly, placed aside his quill and all the scattered pieces of parchment, closed his ink bottle and looked back at me.

"What is it, son?" he inquired with those intimidating silver orbs, forcing me to look away from him.

"She's getting married," was all I said. I was sure he'd know whom I was speaking of.

"I'm sorry," he replied a few seconds later, his voice lacking the surprised tone I had expected to hear.

"You knew?" I asked him, still unable to look at him.

"I did," he said with a rather heavy sigh.

I wondered the reason he hadn't bothered telling me, but before I could ask out loud, he replied, probably interpreting my silence correctly.

"I thought those news weren't mine to tell."

I looked up at him then, and after a few seconds, I decided to stand up and walk out before I felt any worse than I already did in front of my father. He was right, I knew that, but it stung slightly to know apparently the entire world was aware of Rose's new life, except for me.

"He isn't right for her, you know?" Father then spoke, just as I approached the doorway.

"How do you know?"

"Because he's not you," he said, and it seemed like the believed that wholeheartedly.

I stood by the door a little while longer, smiling at my father's rather odd way of trying to comfort me.

"Thank you, dad," I said before walking out of his study and heading upstairs.

It was nice of the old wizard to tell me that, but in some way it bugged me as well. Because, maybe Claude Dubois wasn't me, but Rose still chose him anyway.

**.**

**OOO**

**.**

"Excuse me," I asked the jet black-haired woman behind the reception desk at the Infinity Hotel. "Hello, I'm looking for the Weasley's Wing?"

The woman looked up at me, smiled and batted her fake eyelashes in a rather ridiculous way before replying.

"Who's asking?" she asked in a slightly nasal voice.

"Scorpius?" I then heard a husky voice with a strong French accent by my left.

I turned around to face the bloke who had called out for me in that voice I didn't recognize.

"I've been looking for you," he said casually, which felt rather uncomfortable, since I didn't know the bloke. "I'm Claude Dubois, Rosie's fiancé. Nice to meet you."

"You too," I replied, shaking his hand.

He then turned to the woman by the desk and with a rather charming air to him, he told her I was with them while he winked once. The woman smiled rather stupidly and nodded. She looked then at me and smiled in the same meaningless manner before going back to whatever there was sitting at her desk.

"We're at the end of the hallway, in the Green Wing," Dubois then said, signing me to follow him.

I didn't say anything, I just walked behind him. He walked with a rather annoying swagger, it made him look like he was asking for trouble. He wasn't as tall as I imagined, he was about my own height. He had dark brown hair, styled perfectly to look like that was the way it fell naturally. He wore casual clothes, but just as his hair, it looked like he had thought hard and long to put his outfit together and make it look like he had just thrown whatever on.

He looked back at me, and paused to wait for me. I hadn't noticed that, as I judged him for his looks, I had slowed my pace.

"Is this too awkward?" he asked by the time I stepped beside him.

I didn't reply, I just motioned a 'no' with my head as I kept walking ahead. It was a lie, of course. But it wasn't just awkward, it was suspicious. Why on Earth, marrying to a numerous family which I knew to all its extend, was _this bloke_ welcoming _me_? Wouldn't it make more sense if any of the Weasleys or even the Potters came looking for me at the reception? It felt like the bloke was preparing to give me a warning regarding Rose, before I met with her again. I wouldn't have expected any less though.

"So, what are you up to nowadays?" Dubois asked, not letting my rudeness get to him.

"I'm working with muggles," I replied rather coldly as we walked passed the several Wings the Infinity Hotel presented.

The Infinity Hotel wasn't a hotel precisely. It was a large, magical facility that had seven wings to rent for any kind of event. Each wing worked very much like Hogwart's Room of Requirement. It changed and provided utilities depending on the event that was supposed to be held there. For weddings, a wing would provide a foyer that lead to a ball room with a patio, and rooms for guests throughout several floors. The Green Wing, the one the Weasleys had taken, was the biggest and the one further away from the entrance, which seemed like a nuisance when I had to get there walking along Rose's fiancé.

"Doing what?" Dubois then asked, trying to keep up a conversation I had hoped to never have with him or anyone else for that matter.

"Can't say," I replied coldly, hinting perhaps a work for a secret agency.

It was better not to reveal much of the world I had been hiding in for the past three years, seeing as I was actually planning to go back and stay hidden.

"So you've found something other than Quidditch, huh?"

I looked at the French bloke when he said that, and I did not like the way he looked at me when he said it. As I stared at him, he smiled at me and then looked away. He obviously knew he had touched a nerve.

"Why did you quit by the way?" he asked and suddenly his husky voice sounded so fake to me, like he also tried too hard to _sound_ 'interesting'.

'Because your fiancé left me', I thought immediately, but didn't say it out loud. I was trying my best not to let his 'Yes, I know' attitude get to me.

"I just didn't feel like playing anymore," I replied a few seconds later, getting myself together.

"Twenty three is a rather young age to retire, I believe."

I tried not to get mad, but the bloody bloke was making it awfully hard. He kept pushing me, but not only that. Oh, no, he kept _smiling_ at me, smiling like I was this lost puppy with no home, begging him to feel sympathy for me.

"Scorpius!" I heard ahead, just as I was about to tell the Frenchy to shut his mouth and mind his own bloody business.

"James," I greeted back the eldest of the Potter siblings, my intentions of replying to Dubois less urgent.

James then walked up to me from the Green Wing's wooden doors smiling genuinely and holding hands with a rather captivating young woman. A woman I hadn't had the chance to meet before.

"How have you been?" the raven-haired wizard asked as we shook hands. But before I could reply, he turned to the woman and introduced her. "Oh, I'm sorry. Scorpius, this is Eloise, my wife."

"Nice meeting you, Eloise," I replied smiling at the witch, feeling rather sorry I never bothered knowing her before.

"You too, Scorpius," she replied as we shook hands, smiling back at me.

"So, how are you? Haven't heard of you in ages!" James started and before I could ask Merlin for some distraction, he gave it to me, but not precisely the kind I needed.

"Here's our boy!" An older wizard, a rather famous redhead said out loud behind him, before turning to me and swinging an arm over my shoulders.

"Mr. Weasley," I greeted Rose's uncle, George, smiling as awkwardly as I felt.

"How have you been, Scorpius?" George asked, but I found myself yet again, unable to answer.

"Scorpius! How are you, boy? How's your father?" Harry Potter suddenly asked to my left.

I really didn't know when Mr. Potter had made his way to where we were, but there he was, demanding an answer, just like his brother in law and son were. I looked around as more and more redheads approached me, a few blondes and only one more brunette, Teddy. It felt rather overwhelming, even more so than the first time I had been in the same room as the entire Weasley-Potter-and-others clan.

"Would you let him breathe, Weasleys!" Rose's grandmother, Molly, shouted above the constant questions about my well being. "Come Scorpius, I'll take you to your room."

Then, her hand wrapped around my right forearm and I was miraculously pulled out from the centre of a crowd that had formed surprisingly fast.

I tried to walked at Mrs. Weasley's pace, but I found it difficult, seeing as people kept approaching, but not as suddenly. It seemed like I had arrived at tea-time, for the looks of the packed room. I tried to listen to what Mrs. Weasley was now saying to me, but the loud voices around wouldn't let me. I tried harder and almost immediately regretted it.

"Rosie!" Mrs. Weasley suddenly yelled at our left and pulled me in a different direction than the one we were originally taking. "Look who's here!"

As we approached a large table where only a few people were sitting, enjoying theit tea, I felt as nervous as I hadn't felt in a long time. I even doubted I had ever felt like this in my entire life.

There, sitting by the far end, were Ron and Hermione Weasley talking joyfully to another couple, both of them brunette, most likely the Dubois. But it wasn't the Weasleys presence or the fact that I hadn't seen them for three years that had me nervous. It wasn't the fact that I had seemingly hurt their daughter, or that they probably weren't fond of me at all anymore. It was the fact, that sitting beside her mother, was the one person that had changed my life when I was eleven years old, the person whom I would never be the same without, the one woman I was convinced was the one and only I would ever love the way I did.

Just as her grandmother dragged me right in front of her, her head turned reacting to the older witch's call a few seconds earlier. I watched her forever bright hazel eyes widened slightly as soon as they fell upon my face, and the big smile she had been wearing went smaller.

Those fractions of a second that our eyes meet for the first time in so long, I felt all those things I had once felt on a dark Saturday afternoon at Hogwart's infirmary. My heart suddenly skipped a beat before starting to beat twice as fast as normal. My hands got sweaty instantly, and I almost started hyperventilating. She was more beautiful than ever, if that was even possible. Her hair was longer and it was tied in a braid, making her look like she was a fair maiden, flaunting a beauty every other girl would kill for. She was wearing a deep purple summer dress and bright yellow shoes. Her face was as fair and freckled as it had always been, but her eyes looked older, wiser and so full of joy, and I felt envious at the fact that I wasn't the reason behind that joy.

"Hi," she said, making all the hair in my arms and the back of my neck spike at the reminder of her voice.

"Hi," I greeted her back rather awkwardly. "Uhm, congratulations."

"Thank you," Rose replied smiling slightly, looking at me in the eye as if she couldn't believe I was alive, breathing, and standing in front of her.

I stared at her for a few more fractions of a second before I noticed that everyone at the table was watching us. I turned to Rose's parents feeling rather rude and greeted them as awkwardly as I had greeted their daughter.

The Weasleys didn't seem to hold anything against me, unlike what I had expected. Mrs. Weasley even got up of her seat to hug me hello, which was, although surprising, rather comforting. They then introduced me to Claude's expecting parents.

Mrs. Dubois looked like a rather nice woman. She had long chocolate brown hair and a very sweet smile. Her husband, on the other hand, was pretty much their son's clone, though a couple of decades older. He, just like his son, looked like the kind of wizard who would put on a charming act to make people like him. Although, the years had made him much better at it than Claude was.

"Why don't you have a seat, Scorpius?" Mr. Weasley then said enthusiastically as he pulled a chair for me to sit beside him.

I took the seat not really wanting to, but I wasn't going to give Ronald Weasley another reason to dislike me.

"So, how have you been?" Rose's dad asked with a very inquiring pair of bright blue eyes.

I must admit, that contrary to popular belief, I would never, ever find Harry Potter as intimidating as I found Ronald Weasley to be. Maybe he had just been a slightly distracted sidekick when they were teenagers and premature world saviours, but the redhead grew up to be a very frightening wizard. He _really_ did.

"Good, good," I replied as a cup appeared in front of me with hot lemon tea in it.

When I first decided I wanted to see if Rose was truly happy, I certainly didn't think it through. I had forgotten about everyone else and that fact that I had disappeared from their lives as well. I shouldn't have been surprised that they wanted to know what I had been doing for the three years I had been missing in action.

"What have you been up to?" Mrs. Weasley asked right then, when I had been hoping I didn't have to answer that particular question.

"Not much. I'm sort of wasting my time," I replied half-way truthfully.

Although, it seemed like I was, in fact, wasting my time, seeing as I wasn't doing anything that resembled what a wizard my age should be doing. It would be fine to keep hidden between muggles if I actually liked the non-magical world. But I didn't, like I had mentioned before, I was just comfortable there. I would come back to all I knew if my past wasn't splattered all around. But it was, and so, I had left to never really come back. Because visiting the people I knew wasn't exactly a comeback, it was just a whim I had let myself satisfy, one bet I had lost to my desire to see Rose again.

"Haven't found a new passion yet?" Rose then asked.

I looked at her before I answered. She wasn't looking at me, she was staring rather intently at her cup of tea. I wondered if there's was a particular reason she was avoiding my gaze, and quickly realized that if a reunion like this was awkward to me, it was probably nauseous-inducing for her.

"No. Not really," I replied, looking at my cup as well.

"So, tell me kid," Claude's father then spoke, addressing me oddly enough. "Why does a good Quidditch player such as yourself, quit after his first World Cup win?"

I tried not to glare at the older wizard for such question. Instead I imagined myself punching him, which didn't help since I felt the urge to actually jump him.

"I'm sure the boy had his reason to leave, Isaac," Mr. Weasley said coldly at the French man, "As I'm sure, that reason is none of your business."

"Ronald," Mrs. Weasley whispered almost inaudibly as she placed her hand on his arm ever so softly.

"I'm just curious, Ronnie," he wizard replied in his heavy French accent and I could swear Mr. Weasley's entire body tensed at the 'Ronnie'. "As to why the young man at your side decided to leave yet another matter unfinished."

"Isaac," Mrs. Dubois warned her husband.

At Mr. Dubois constant provocations, I couldn't help but to look at Rose and wonder the reason she kept quiet before so obvious attacks. She wasn't looking at me, or the older wizard, she just kept looking at her bloody tea cup. Her expression was unreadable, and I found myself wondering if she thought the same way her soon-to-be father in law did. Did she believe I gave up on her too? Because she didn't have the right to think that, since it was _her_ who left _me_.

"Scorpius, mate, it's been years," a voice I hadn't heard in a long time said right at the perfect moment, before an already tense silence got any worse.

I turned my head around to see a rather tall Hugo approach us wearing quite a smile along with Claude _bloody_ Dubois.

The boy who wasn't really a boy anymore, placed one his hands on my shoulder and squeezed it briefly before sitting himself beside me.

"Albus just got here," Hugo told everyone at the table before addressing me. "He's looking forward to have a word with you, Scorpius boy."

At his words, his sister finally looked up. I tried not minding her, and instead tried not to imagine her cousin hitting the lights out of me.

Hugo then winked at me once, and for some reason it felt like we now had a camaraderie we hadn't really forged before. He turned to everyone else and started talking about only Merlin knows what, lightening the tense atmosphere. He kept away from subjects such as Quidditch, quitting and me disappearing for the past three years. I noticed then, he had been the only one who hadn't tried getting me to spill how my life was going nowadays, and I appreciated it wholeheartedly.

It was rather heart-warming to know what kind of person Hugo had turned into. He had grown a rather unique funny bone. Unlike Fred or his Uncle George, he wasn't a prankster or joke-like funny, he just had a certain attitude. The way he said things, the witty comments he would come up with were really amusing. It took me a while to get used to it, since I had never really known this side of him. We didn't quite develop any kind of bond when we were younger. He was on the quieter side of the family, always talking only to Lily, and unlike the girl, he was never one to catch people's attention... or at least not more than what the Weasley name would get him. He had always been on the low, keeping things to himself and only trusting one of his cousins. It really was something to see him so comfortable with whom he had become.

The next few minutes went quite nicely. I had to remember thanking Hugo later for keeping his relatives from asking me any other questions I wouldn't want to answer.

Soon enough the conversation had turned to the business subject. Isaac Dubois had turned out exactly the way I thought he was. He was one arrogant toe-rag who thought the entire world was in debt with him for some unexplainable reason. The man was a broom developer and it sounded like quite a job, with a nice payment and a whole lot of fame. But his last great creation had been the Firebolt 2.0, which had already been outmatched by three more generations of brooms. That meant that the old wizard hadn't come up with anything better in over ten years, and that made him a really annoying man with nothing to justify the arrogance that made him that annoying.

I wasn't the only one who found Isaac Dubois an impossible arse though. Mr. Weasley clearly liked his daughter's father in law as much as I did. He kept rolling his eyes at the French's economy remarks and kept clutching his fist every time Dubois called him 'Ronnie'. I honestly was every minute more convinced that Claude's father had no sense of preservation by the way he kept ranting about how the Weasleys really hadn't made anything for themselves but to defeat an old wizard with a superiority complex. I was sure that the man must have been somewhere far away, probably in the American continent, during the Second Wizarding War. No one who knew what Voldemort had been doing at that time, would have spoken about him so lightly.

I tried not listening to the delirious French, but every time I looked away from him, my eye was caught by Claude and his persistent attempts to send me the message that Rose was his and his only.

He kept whispering in her ear, making her shiver, which he probably thought she was doing out of pleasure. What he was most likely unaware of was that Rose had really sensitive ears, and she hated shivering like that. Rose liked control, control over her choices, her mind and her _body_. What he was doing was depriving her from controlling her reactions. I had gotten into plenty of trouble for that reason solely before, and I wholeheartedly hoped he would get his arse handed to him for it as well.

I turned my eyes to the plate of biscuits in front of me and tried keeping them there, so I wouldn't have to bear neither with Claude and his message nor with his father. I then heard Rose asking her fiancé to stop what he was doing rather coldly, and I smiled at that. I tried not to look up to them, but I failed.

If I had been him, I would have also glared at the bloke smirking at me.

"Rosie!" A voice that could only be Lily's reached my ears, and just as in cue, the youngest of the Potters approached our table. "We must go now, or we will be late for your last fitting."

"Oh, I had forgotten," Rose said and freed herself rather roughly from her fiancé's grip.

"Well, hello Scorpius, I hadn't seen you there," Rose's cousin said smiling, putting a hand on my shoulder.

"How have you been, Lily?" I asked.

I meant to stand up to greet Lily properly, but she didn't let me, she just patted my back and told me to stay in my chair. Rose and her were leaving anyway.

"Rosie, we must go," the young redhead hurried her cousin then, before she turned back to me and whispered in my ear.

"Al wants to talk to you," she said discretely while Rose stood up and excused herself. "He's at the patio."

I was now starting to think that Potter had grown shy with the years. Since when did he send his relatives to do what he could himself?

I didn't get the chance to ask Lily the reason her brother wanted to talk to me so urgently, for the girl dressed in lime green took hold of Rose's wrist and dragged her away as soon as she whispered that last sentence to me.

"Could I have a word with you, Scorp," I then heard Claude say as he smiled at me, in the same friendly act he had been directing towards me earlier in the afternoon.

"Sure," I agreed, excusing myself from the table and walking behind the French, towards the sliding doors that led to the patio."I prefer Scorpius though."

"That's unimportant," Claude dismissed my statement in such a way that I was completely sure the bloke was nothing more than a walking lie.

He didn't say anything else right away. We walked through the patio to a narrow wooden deck that died at the end of a rather peaceful lake. The whole thing looked like a small oasis, with pond frogs jumping from leaf to leaf. But none of that seemed to matter, as I knew that warning I was expecting from Frenchy earlier was going to be made now.

"You know, I didn't believe you'd show when I first sent you an invitation," Claude started, his back to me as he stared at the lake ahead. "Rose got really mad at me for it, but I wanted to see for myself how much of a big deal you were supposed to be."

He then turned to face me and with an arrogant face that would probably make his father proud, he continued.

"I must admit, I'm disappointed."

"Are you trying to give me a reason to bruise your face?" I asked the bloody bloke as both of my hands clutched into fists at my side.

I knew he was just pretending to be nice to me before, I knew he was just acting so he wouldn't look like an idiot. I understood why he felt the need to make himself bigger than me, given the circumstances. I understood, but I didn't appreciate it.

"Not at all. I'm just trying to be honest for a change," he replied, smiling that fake smile that was starting to piss me off.

He turned to the lake once again and sighed heavily, like an old grandfather would sigh when he was asked to tell the same tale he had repeated one too many times.

"Since Rose and I got together, I had found myself rather curious about why exactly it all ended between you two. Rose has told me you simply stopped trying, but I can't quite believe that," he said, his back still at me. "I've spent the last three years trying to get a good picture of you through Rose's family. For what I could sort out it seems you're not much to worry about."

He turned to me again and smiling cynically, he kept going.

"Not that the Weasleys told me so. They're awfully fond of you, though I can't figure out why. I mean, your family had once made their lives unbearable."

I tried not to let myself get bothered at his remark about my family. I knew what they had done, but I held nothing against them. I was not ashamed. Their actions had only made me what I was , and if the Weasleys themselves were fine with that, then why wouldn't I?

"But you see, even if you aren't as much of a threat as I thought you might be, I can't quite tell the reason your here," he then turned to me with the same face I would dream about beating. "So, I would like to ask you if you came here to take my fiancé from me, and if you are, I wholeheartedly suggest you think about it twice, before I make you regret it."

He didn't say anything else, he just stood there, probably expecting me to confess my hidden motives or bending to whatever pressure what he had said was supposed to make me feel. He was quite delusional if he thought I could be easily scared, specially by someone who had nothing going for himself but a decent ability to trick people.

"Impressive," I replied to his speech, shoving my hands in the pockets of my trousers, and smirking like any Malfoy would when it comes to fighting with words.

"Pardon me?" the bloke asked in such a ridiculous French accent, that I was starting to think that was false too.

"I said 'impressive'," I replied, smirking widely. "You must be one hell of an actor."

"As a matter of fact I am. But that's relative because?"

I stared at the bloke, still smirking. If there was something I would always carry in my veins undeniably, was the ability to deal with threats.

"I don't think Rose would marry someone like you unless she didn't know your true colours."

"Maybe not," he admitted, his smile still there, still annoying. "Then again it seems like you were always honest with her, yet she didn't marry you either."

"It wasn't her decision," It really wasn't. I had been the one who decided that, I just never cared to admit it to myself until it was too late.

"Right, it was yours. You were too scared to be man enough to pop the question."

"I'm not here to take her back with me," I replied, trying not to let his last statement get to me. "First she's a witch, she's not an object one can move around as pleased. Second, I'm merely trying to be a better person and support her happiness."

That had been true at some point. I did really mean to get here only to make sure her life had turned out the way she wanted. But the bloke just seemed so wrong for her. His family clashed with hers and he was as false as a silver Galleon.

"Do you believe I would make her happy?" Claude asked me then, and for a moment I thought I had seen a glint of truthfulness in that fake mask of his.

"Not one bit," I replied honestly, realizing that I really couldn't do what I had set myself to do when I first got back to my apartment in Ireland and found that bloody invitation.

"Isn't that slightly contradicting?" Claude asked, every trace of genuine worry completely whipped from his face.

"When I first got here, I came with every intention to let her be happy, but she won't be if she marries you," I replied, and maybe hoped to get some honesty out of the French wizard. "I think you know that too."

At that, Dubois' mask fell completely and I could finally see his real face. It was a lot more serene than I had expected, but his eyes, dark as Hogwart's lake at night, looked like they could set fire with one stare.

"You can try stopping us. But you won't succeed," he said, and even his husky voice sounded genuine now. "She won't choose you over me. I'm willing to give her all she wants. You, on the other hand, are too scared to."

"You seem awfully confident for someone who's known her for only three years," I replied, smiling at the fact that what he was saying was rather accurate.

"So do you, for someone who spent six years with her and still got dumped."

"Do you really love her, Claude?" I asked him, sincerely expecting him to be honest and not the perfect bloke he pretended to be in front of her.

"What is it to you?"

I stared at the bloke, searching in his face for the answer he refused to give me. He didn't give me enough time to find it. He turned his back to me and looked ahead to the lake for a few seconds before he turned to walk away.

"Go home, Malfoy," he told me, just as he walked past me to the doors that lead back to the ball room still full of people having an uneventful tea time. "You won't be missed."

I stared at the sliding doors the brunette bloke had disappeared behind and wondered the reason he acted the way he did.

He seemed so sure that there was nothing I could do to stop the wedding, and yet he refused to say the only sentence that could make me and my suspicion to go away. If he had told me that he loved her and that she loved him back, I would have gone home, just like he suggested. But he didn't say anything. I even gave him the opportunity, and he didn't take it.

What was all of this about then? Why did he propose to her? And why did Rose say yes?

Because I knew Rose, I knew her enough to be absolutely certain that she knew the bloke wasn't being completely honest with her. She was an analytic person, as much as I was. If I could tell Claude was just an act, I was sure Rose could as well. Yet she was marrying a walking lie.

The only explanation possible was that _she_ loved _him_, with all his deceits and masks. She loved him...

"I once thought _you_ to be a real git," I suddenly heard behind me another voice I haven't heard in a long, long time. One I never particularly missed. "But that was before I knew _him_."

I turned back to the lake to see Albus Potter walking over to the edge of the deck and sitting down, his legs swing in the air and the tip of his shoes an inch above the water.

I stayed where I had been standing for a few seconds before I walked over to the deck and sat myself beside Potter. I knew he wanted to have a word with me, I knew most likely what he was going to say, but truth be told, I didn't want to hear him. Nevertheless we were both here, now. Might as well just get it over with, right?

"How's your life been, Malfoy?" the raven-haired wizard asked me after a minute that passed us by as we watched the unchanging surface of the lake.

"Worthless."

I was true. I had wasted my time in such a way that not one of the experiences I had had in the past three years was worth anything at all. I knew that I was probably just giving Potter the perfect entrance for the beating of a lifetime, but I didn't care. I was rather tired of pretending that I was fine. I was tired of tricking his family into believing that I was getting better, because I wasn't. I honestly believed they even knew that, but they still took my word, out of politeness or fondness, I wouldn't know. The only thing I knew was that I had screwed up my life beyond belief and I was now trying to figure out a way to fix it all, to give myself a reason to stay alive.

"Do you regret it?" Potter asked a little while later, the sympathy in his voice was almost tangible.

"What?" I asked dumbfounded. That was a reaction I hadn't seen coming.

"Letting her go?" he said looking away from the lake to my face.

"Now more than ever," I replied, looking back at him.

The resemblance the prick had with his father was more noticeable now than ever. The only thing missing were the round glasses the older wizard had sported his entire life. I kept staring at Potter and I couldn't help remembering that day, when we graduated from Hogwarts, when his father looked me in the eye and told me that I was part of their family, whether I felt it or not.

"What are you going to do about it?" Potter then asked, turning his face away from me and stared distractedly at the horizon.

"What can I do, Albus?"

"I wish I knew," he sighed a few seconds later, after probably realizing he didn't know either.

Neither of us spoke for a little while. Tea time had been over for an hour before we spoke again, just when twilight was closing the day on us.

"So, not a fan of the Frenchy, are you?"

"Nope," Potter replied heavily, "None of us is, really."

"At all?"

"At all."

We kept quiet for another minute or two. Then Potter, stood up from the edge of the deck and walked a few steps back to the ball room, before turning to me.

"You should do something," he told my back, still by the deck. "No, in fact, you _have_ to."

I tried not to sigh in frustration.

"I can't just march in there and tell your cousin that I don't think the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with might not love her like he makes her believe."

"She's not blind, Scorpius. I'm sure that she knows that deep inside."

"Still, who am I to tell her what to feel?" I asked my former classmate and enemy, each second more frustrated than the last.

"You're the love of her life."

"Not anymore, Al."

I stared at the water under me and wished a giant squid or something would suddenly appear, pull me into the lake and drown me.

"In all my life, I had never seen Rosie as happy as she was when you two got together," Potter said closer behind me, his voice sporting that same sympathy tone he used before, like he pitied me. "To me, that was true love, and true love never dies."

"Anabelle has done magic with you," I mocked him not really wanting to hate myself any more than I did because of him.

"You can't let her marry him."

"What am I supposed to do?" I asked him honestly. Because I really didn't know what I could do at this point. "I let her go in the first place, Albus. She's not mine to claim back."

"At least try!"

"Fine! Tell me how!" I snapped, standing up and turning to face the raven-headed prick that kept asking me to do something both of us knew was a longer shot than playing Quidditch without a broom.

"I don't kn-"

"Of course you don't!" I cut him off. "Believe me Albus, I want to stop her. I want to tell her that I still love her and that she should dump the French and come back to me. I just don't know how to do that."

I refused to stay standing there by the deck looking like an idiot to Potter. I took advantage of the fact that the other bloke didn't seem to find the words to talk me into whatever it was he wanted me to do, and walked away.

"Scorp!" I heard Potter call out to me as I opened the sliding doors that lead to the ball room. "Scorpius!"

I paid him no attention, not even when he walked into the room behind me. I needed to get out of there. The pressure Potter was putting on me was even more overwhelming than realizing that whatever I felt for Rose before was still there, resuscitating with each breath I took. I kept walking, heading for the door that would get me out of the Green Wing. I stumbled into a few guests, some I knew, some I didn't. I tried avoiding any member of the Weasley family or the Potters, anyone really that would want me to stay, which made me collapse against a brunette witch that already seemed upset. I apologized as fast as I could and convinced myself that she had been crying before I stomped onto her feet in my hurry.

When I finally got out, I tried not to hyperventilate.

This was probably the worst idea I had had in my entire life. What on Earth had I been thinking? How much of an idiot could I have been to believe that seeing Rose happy would be enough for me to leave her again.

Because that was what I was doing. I was leaving her to be happy without me once more. Despite of what happened, it had all been my fault. She didn't leave me, I had pushed her away. The same way I had six years ago when we were still in school. I kept making the same mistake over and over again. I kept letting her be and made myself miserable in the process. I wasn't any better now than when I was seventeen. But this time, pushing her away, would cost me a lifetime of happiness.

Because I refused to be happy without her. I hadn't tried, and I was convinced that I never would. She was the one and only that could ever make me feel that I wasn't a waste of space and air. She was the only reason I had to be alive. And I had lost her again.

I was worth nothing without her, and as much as I wanted her to take me back, it was too late. She had taken someone else's promise and all I could do was watch, wish her good luck and give up.


	4. That's The Truth

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series, any its character or settings, all you recognize belongs to J. K. Rowling.**

**A/N: Here you go, people! Chapter number 4, second to last for this one. So, as I promised, this next instalment is written in Rose's POV. It has a couple of small twists that I hope will surprise you in the good way. I will warn you that this ends sadly, but don't give up on me! I still have one last chapter to make you happy! I will not throw away something that took me 20 chapters to achieve in MLWSWY, so bare with me!**

**Anyway, thanks to everyone who has alerted, favoured and reviewed this story, I really appreciate it, and once again, Happy Reading!... And don't forget to review.!**

"**That's The Truth"**

I stared at the woman in the mirror, all dressed up in her wedding gown, her hair and make up done, looking back at me with a rather cold pair of hazel eyes. I tried not to hold against her the way she felt, because she had all the right to feel as troubled and scared as she did.

"Oh, Rosie!" Mum then said while she stared at me with watered eyes. "You look beautiful."

I smiled at my mother's comment, trying to focus on the dress and not the big unsettling feeling that had been drowning me since tea-time.

The dress the now aged Madam Malkin had personally offered to design for me, was truly breathe taking. The white organza, the A-line and strapless bodice, the flirty, delicate cut of the skirt and the detailing and barely noticeable beading at the waist were magnificent. The dressed looked like the cloak of heaven and I felt honoured for being allowed to wear such a master piece.

"You really do," Lily agreed with mum and then turned her red head to the witch that had created the dress. "You have to make mine too, Madam."

I stared at my own reflection again, and smiled at the fact that the girl standing in the mirror did look gorgeous. I took a deep breath and stepped down from the small stool I had been standing on to go change. I thanked Madam Malkin for the dress before I going back to the changing booth. I unzipped the dress with my wand and put back on the summer dress I had been wearing earlier. By the time I came out of the booth, my mother had already paid for the dress and was thanking the older witch for her service.

"I didn't have the chance to ask you with your mum there, but how are you feeling?" Lily asked me by the time we sat down at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour.

Soon after we had gone back to the busy Diagon Alley, Lily suddenly fancied an ice cream. Mum offered to take back the dress to the Hotel while we ate, and reminded us to be back by seven for the rehearsal dinner before Dissaparating in the middle of the street.

"I'm fine," I replied distractedly as I slowly ate my lemon sorbet and watched all the late-afternoon shoppers go from store to store.

"You don't look fine," my cousin then insisted.

"How do I look, then?" I looked up at her.

"You look like you wished to drop dead," she replied as casually as if I had asked for the weather, while she kept abusing her cherry sorbet.

I didn't say anything else. It wasn't like I could deny it. I did wish I could just drop dead.

I never really thought Scorpius would show up at my wedding. I didn't expect him to. I thought he would be too upset and would most like me hate me for never saying anything. I didn't quite know the reason I didn't bother contacting him again, even if it was just to say hello. I guessed the damage was too great and the silence too long. What right did I have to interrupt his new life, and probably happiness? Who was I to remind him of my existence when he was probably over me? Over us?

"You should have seen that coming," Lily then said, bringing me back to reality. "You sent him an invitation."

"Claude did, not me."

"Why would he do that?" my cousin looked away from her almost finished ice cream to me.

"Because he needed to prove himself something, I don't know."

I let the conversation die there. Lily didn't need to know what Claude was planning back then or even now, and truth be told I didn't need to either. No, actually I didn't _want_ to know.

**...**

"_You did what?"_

_I couldn't believe what had come out of my fiancé's mouth. I tried not yelling there, in front of the rest of the Hospital staff that was having lunch at the lounge room with us._

"_I invited Scorpius Malfoy to the wedding," Claude said again, while he kept eating his tuna salad, as if what he had told me wasn't such a big deal._

"_Why on Earth would you do that?" I whispered angrily._

"_I wanted to."_

_He wanted to... Was he joking with me?_

"_Why!" I tried not to raise my voice any higher than a whisper, but it was getting harder with each of his words._

"_Just because."_

_I stared at Claude not believing my ears. Why would he want to know Scorpius? Which groom in this Earth ever wanted to know their bride's former lover?_

"_Just because is no valid reason for putting me through the discomfort his presence will be."_

"_Why would it be uncomfortable?" Claude then looked at me, his dark eyes even darker in curiosity._

"_Are you joking?"_

"_No. I am not," he replied dead serious, and then I understood what it was he wanted to get out of me with all this. "I sincerely want to know, Rose."_

"_I'm over him, you know that," I spat at him._

_How dared he suggest I had an ulterior motive to avoid meeting Scorpius again, or from keeping him to know the blonde wizard?_

"_You're acting like you didn't," he replied coldly as he went back to his salad, completely ignoring my outrage._

"_There's a reason I'm marrying you, you know?"_

_After that, I just stood up from the table and went back to my rounds, even though I still had another hour before I had to go back to work. The conversation had left me without one single desire to eat anything else._

_For the rest of the day, I tried avoiding running into Claude at work, which had been rather difficult seeing as he worked there too. It wasn't until I had finished my hours, that I could finally run back home while he finished his._

_By the time I Apparated back to our cottage at the outskirts of__Chipping Campden, my stomach was demanding the food I had deprived it from at lunch. I tried making dinner, without thinking in what could possibly happen when Claude came back home, but I failed miserably._

_I couldn't stop thinking about it all. I couldn't fathom what it was that Claude was trying to prove inviting Scorpius to our wedding. It was such a ridiculous request anyway. I seriously doubted the former Quidditch player would bother. It seemed to me, when it all ended, it had no repair. I was sure that his disappearance meant something greater than what most of the magical population thought. And I didn't think he'd come back to his own world. He had left us all behind and decided to move forward hidden from familiar eyes._

_No, I didn't know what Claude wanted, but I surely knew Scorpius was not buying into it. He wasn't coming. He had long ago decided he didn't want to have anything to do with me. We hadn't spoken in three years, that said something._

_He wouldn't bother with me anymore. He hated me, probably with all his might, and I guessed he had the right to. I didn't think I was the only one to blame for whatever went wrong with us, but I was certain that I played quite a part, maybe even bigger than his. I gave my career such an importance that I had forgotten about his. His was important too, he needed support and I denied him that when he needed it the most. I had been a terrible girlfriend, and maybe that was why he never asked me to marry him, why he decided to give up on me._

_But I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. I would be for Claude what I hadn't been for Scorpius. I had learnt my lesson._

_So what if I didn't really get what reasons my fiancé had to meet Scorpius Malfoy? I didn't really need to know. I just had to try to understand and support him if he needed me to. Yes, it would most likely be the most awkward meeting I would ever have to go through, but maybe something good could come from that too. Maybe, seeing each other again could let us both forgive one another, and in the best case scenario, become friends again._

"_I just want to know him," Claude said as soon as he came home and got into the bed with me._

_He had left the Hospital rather late, I was sure he had taken a couple of hours more to delay himself. I knew he only did that when he felt that I needed a little more time to calm down after a fight._

"_I need to make sure I'm better than him. That you were right to choose me," he then told me, while he swung his arm over me and held me softly._

"_You don't need to prove anything," I replied, holding his hand._

"_I believe I do."_

_We didn't say anything else. I just let him think what he wanted. Soon enough he fell sleep and I felt comfort in the way his breathe brushed the back of my neck._

_Despite what he told me, I was sure there was another reason for him to prove he was better than Scorpius._

_Ever since we started dating two years ago, he had had a tough time getting my family to approve of him. He never really knew the reason until one awful night he had an argument with Albus. I didn't know what exactly they had told each other, but I was certain in which side Albus' loyalty had remained. With the years, my cousin had grown fond of Scorpius. I guessed that they went there, and Albus told Claude how much better he thought Scorpius to be than him. Maybe that was the reason Claude felt he had something to prove... because my own family had pushed him into it._

_It wasn't easy being accepted by such a large, protective family like mine. Scorpius had fit in surprisingly well, which had been probably caused by the differences he had with his father. For some reason, to my family, Scorpius couldn't be anything else but part of our clan, seeing as how like his mother he was. My Aunt Ginny had been rather good mates with Astoria Malfoy, when her surname had been Greengrass. They hadn't been in the same House, but they had maintain a rather civilized relationship, which later explained the fondness my aunt felt for the Malfoy boy._

_As hard as it was to comprehend, the same society that had brand us all as the predictable offspring of war survivors, was starting to believe that what Scorpius and I had was the end of centuries of hatred between two long lasting wizarding families. For them all, it marked the end on an era and a new beginning, where enemies didn't have to be and real bonds of peace could be formed._

_My family probably felt the same, but refused to admit it out loud. They wouldn't put such pressure on us. But I knew that they too wished my relationship with Scorpius had lasted forever. That was why they didn't like Claude, that was why they kept testing him and making him believe he needed to prove himself to them._

_I guessed I understood why they did that. It wasn't all Scorpius' fault, Claude was also to blame._

_The French wizard wasn't exactly the most outgoing person in the world. He was rather reserved and trusted very little in people. He was, though, very good at hiding that. Sometimes it would seem like he was being false and misleading. Most of the times he would put up an act to make sure people had a certain impression of him. He could be very charismatic when he needed to, and very arrogant and annoying when he saw such personality fit the occasion. He was like a chameleon, changing his colours depending on his surroundings._

_I never really understood why he was that way. He once told me, he liked making a strong first impression to make sure people judged him by that, and not bother getting to know him any further. In that aspect, he reminded me a lot of a blonde wizard I had first disliked for being a closed book._

_He had never acted with me though. Yes, he was a magnificent actor, but when he was genuine, one could tell, because his eyes would look darker and his face would turned as serene as if he had all the time in the world. That had been the face he had always shown me. That was the reason I had chose to spend the rest of my life with him, because I knew he loved me enough to always be honest with me. I knew he wouldn't hurt me like most people thought he would. I knew him, and accepted him as he was._

_And that wouldn't change, whether my family accepted him or not, whether he was never able to prove himself better than Scorpius. None of that would matter to me._

_I would still marry him._

**...**

"We need to go Rosie, it's 7:00 already," Lily then said, bringing me back to reality once again.

"Right."

We stood up just as the skies decided to turn dark blue in a blink of an eye. Lily paid the ice cream, insisting that it was her treat to the bride, and we walked out with our arms linked together. We walked slowly through the now less busy street of Diagon Alley, talking fashion and other vanities. Lily was indecisive as to what to wear to the rehearsal dinner tonight, but after talking it through she decided to wear the yellow dress I had given her the last Christmas. She hadn't really had the opportunity to wear it yet, and it seemed like my marriage was her excuse to finally letting the piece of clothing be worn for the first time.

We Disapparated back to the Infinity Hotel right after Lily made up her mind. We Apparated by the front gardens of the Hotel and walked in. We meant to go straight to the Green Wing, but Lily ran into some of her friends that were attending the dinner. I greeted them quickly and thanked them for coming before I went ahead.

I walked over to the end of the hallway and as soon as I opened the Wing's doors I regretted it.

"Hi," Al said as he walked towards me.

I walked ahead to meet him halfway, but not in an attempt to listen, but to make sure he knew I was in a hurry.

"I can't talk right now, Albus. I need to get dressed."

I tried walking past him, but he didn't let me. He grabbed my wrist swiftly and asked for a word. I sincerely did not want to talk to him now, nor any time soon for that matter.

Ever since Claude and him got caught up in that silly argument about Scorpius, I had been having a hard time getting along with Al myself. Every time we were left alone, my cousin kept ranting about how Claude was fake and about the fact that I was acting like an idiot pretending that I was over Scorpius.

Which I was, and that made Albus the idiot, for pushing me into admitting something I didn't feel.

My entire relationship with Claude had tensed things up between Albus and I. Since they first met, my cousin had been very persistent on his feelings about the French. It was obvious he didn't like him, but he didn't even try to get along for my sake. And that's was just incomprehensible.

How on Earth had Albus Severus Potter been willing to make a truce with his entire school-life 'enemy' for me and not at least try to get along with someone he had no reason to dislike?

It was plain ridiculous. The worst part wasn't how much he disliked my fiancé though, it was his constant speeches about how I was still in love with Malfoy but was too blind to see it.

I had once thought my cousin had common sense; I certainly didn't think that anymore. He had no business telling me what I felt or not, like I couldn't sense it.

I didn't give Albus a chance to start. I pulled my wrist free just when he thought I had given in and walked quickly to the staircase. I knew he wouldn't follow me. We were past running behind each other at this point in our lives, but I still walked upstairs as fast as I could in fear he might want to relive the old days, when everything ended in one of us chasing the other.

"Are you alright?" Claude asked me as soon as I arrived to our room and closed the door behind me.

"I'm fine," I replied, slightly out of breathe.

He stared at me from the suite's living room with a amused smile, before going back to the mirror in front of him and tried fixing his tie.

"Albus ambushed you?"

"Sometimes it scares me how you know those things," I replied smiling back at him as I walked over to him and took his tie from him and fixed it.

"Hello," Claude then said, trapping me in his arms before kissing me lightly in the lips.

"Hi," I replied and kissed him back. "You're dressed rather early."

"Yeah, I have some guests arriving now."

"I still have to shower and get dressed."

"I'll distract them for you," he whispered in my ear like when a little boy asks someone to keep a promise.

Claude kissed me once more before dropping his arms and putting his jacket on. He turned smiling still, winked at me and walked out of the room.

I stared at the silver lined door for a couple of seconds. I later turned to walk into the bedroom. I unzipped the summer dress and disposed of my underwear to take a shower. About forty minutes later, I stood in front of the same mirror Claude had been earlier and looked at my reflection. After checking my turquoise dress was properly placed and my hair and make-up were perfect, I took a pair of heels that matched the dress and put them on before walking out of the suite.

By the time I came downstairs, the ball room was filled with large tables set up for dinner. Most of the guests were standing around still though, greeting each other or catching up in loud chitchats. I smiled at the guests as I walked by them, searching for my fiancé. I tried not to keep an eye out for a certain blonde head, and realized later, when I spotted Louis and felt myself flustered, that I had been looking for Scorpius unconsciously anyway.

I pushed Scorpius out of my mind just as I reached the table Claude was sitting at with James and Teddy. They were starting to talk about Quidditch as I sat myself down and Claude placed one of his arms around me. At the motion, I noticed both of my cousins look at us slightly colder, which gave birth to a short, but still very awkward silence.

Sometimes my entire family's attitude got to me. They never glared at Scorpius when he showed me affection, but Merlin forbade Claude barely touched me and they would get on alert mode.

I tried not thinking about that either, and instead focused on the stars above, where the ceiling of the ball room had been enchanted to show the night sky. Not much later, everyone was on their respective seats and dinner had started. Surprisingly enough it all went smoothly. Neither Albus nor Hugo said anything against my fiancé in their speeches. Nobody attacked him for no apparent reason, and nobody exposed why they felt I was delusional enough to think I was in love with someone I wasn't. Which, again, wasn't their decision.

Still, I could feel every one of the twenty five pair of eyes that belonged to my family burning a whole in my face every time Claude leaned over to even speak to me. I tried to stay calm, but it was getting harder by the minute, specially when Claude himself had done an amazing job at getting used to being stared, and sometimes glared secretly, by eighteen Weasleys, five Potters and two Lupins.

By the time dessert had come, I had had enough and excused myself from the table. I walked out to the patio and sat by the wooden deck at the small lake. The night wind wasn't as warm as I had thought, but I didn't want to go back in. Something about it felt wrong.

"I don't want to hear it, Al," I told my cousin just as he sat beside me on the deck ten minutes later.

"Hear what?" he asked in his most innocent voice. "That he's suspicious, that he's fake or that you're making a huge mistake?"

I knew it. I should have pretend to feel sick and go back to my room. At least there, he couldn't have just barged in. He would have had to knock and I could have simply ignored him.

"Can't you just try to support me, just one little bit?" I asked sighing. I was so tired of fighting with him.

"No, Rosie, no," Albus replied dead serious and I knew then that he would never change his mind.

"Great, thanks."

After that, I just stood up and walked away from yet another argument. I paid my cousin no attention when he called out to me and asked me to go back. I walked into the ball room and disappointed beyond belief, left the Wing, not caring who was looking or who thought badly of me for it. I would explain my departure to Claude later tonight. I didn't owe any kind of explanation to anyone else.

I was tired, simply tired of this. I had never argued with Albus longer than a couple of hours. We had been on this trembling path for six months now, when I first told him Claude had proposed. At first I had thought he had been left speechless because he had been happy for me. But Anabelle later told me, Albus had gone home fuming and had trashed the entire garage in a tantrum. I had never known of such kind of fits from Albus, and it really shook me up. I tried talking to him about it, but he kept telling me the same thing over and over again, that Claude would never make me as happy as Scorpius once had.

It really took all my self-control not to curse the prick right then and there. He had no right to tell me who to be with. He had no right to talk to me like if I was this little girl who had been tricked with candy and lollipops. I was the one who knew how I felt, not him. And as for the new found fondness he had for the blonde bloke, he could shove it where the sun didn't shine.

"Can I have a cherry flavoured firewhiskey, please? I stared at the bartender while he poured me a drink with an annoying smile of his face.

After deciding that bailing my own dinner party was probably the best decision I had made in a long time, I Disapparated to a small pub near Diagon Alley in London. It was a new establishment a couple of blocks from the Leaky Cauldron. It seemed comfortable and with a rather nice atmosphere. It had music and some special services, like a regular muggle club, expect that the only one attending people was the dirty blonde bartender, who seemed to like to smile way too much at strangers.

"Here you go, Miss Weasley," he said handing me the drink.

I didn't say anything back to the creepy bartender, I just nodded in gratitude. I tried not to get alarmed by the fact that the man knew my name without me telling him, but then again, if life had been hectic at Hogwarts where everyone knew me one way or another, in the Wizarding World it was even worse. My uncle Harry once told me that we all would be most likely treated the same way he was when he first stepped into this world. He hadn't know it then, but it certain did know him.

"When did you start drinking?" I heard a familiar voice just when I was having my first sip.

"Not long ago."

"I thought your rehearsal dinner was tonight," Scorpius said as he took the seat beside me and sighed in a manner that reminded me of those bad days he sometimes had at the Unit.

"It is," I sighed myself as I slowly turned the glass between my hands.

"Why aren't you there?"

"I just didn't feel like it anymore."

We stayed quiet for a little while, and surprisingly, the silence we had fallen into reassembled those we used to enjoy at the Head's Common Room back at Hogwarts, when we had first started such a life-changing friendship.

"Here," Scorpius said a few minutes later, handing me a box I didn't know where he had been keeping. "I meant to give it to you earlier, but decided to get drunk instead."

"Bertie Bots?" I smiled taking the box.

"They're all lemon."

I opened the candy package and stared at the inside. They were indeed all lemon.

It's hard to explain how I felt when I realized what such gift meant. I felt rather overwhelmed by the gesture. I actually didn't expect him to give me anything when I first saw him at tea-time, let alone something like this. I had never really known the time we spent at the Hogwarts Express during our seventh year Holidays had meant enough to him to remember such details.

I smiled at the reminder of two teenagers, mad at their parents, sharing unpleasant moments with each other and forming a small 'lemon-bertie-bot' club.

"That's... that's really sweet, Scorpius," I said after the knot that had suddenly appeared at my throat loosened a little. "Thank you."

I smiled at the blonde wizard and he smiled back at me before letting his silver eyes fall from my face back to the box.

"I was thinking that maybe we could..." He started looking back at me, and I wondered when had his eyes become so soft. "I know we've gone through a lot and that our time ended abruptly and on a very soar note, but maybe someday we can be friends again."

He then looked back to his drink and after a couple of seconds, continued.

"Because I've missed you," he said, and I suddenly felt like an invisible fist had closed around my heart. "And despite everything, I want you to be happy."

"You do?" I felt the knot at my throat drowning me again.

"Yes,"

He hadn't said it right away. He said it like it took him an actual effort to just say 'yes', like if he needed to say something else, but backed up at the last second.

"But?" I knew that was what he wanted to say. 'I want you to be happy, _but_..."

"I don't think he's right for you," he said after a couple of seconds more staring at his drink, which was nothing more than an empty glass now.

"Of course you don't."

I should have seen that coming. How could I had been as stupid as to think that he would approved of Claude, when my own family openly didn't?

Not that I needed his approval, or anyone else's for that matter.

"I know that I have no right to tell you who to be with, Rose" No, he did not. "But I honestly think he'll make you miserable."

"Like you did?"

I couldn't help myself, and I knew I probably shouldn't have said that. Not now that we finally spoke again to each other, not now that we had taken the first step into forgiveness.

But I couldn't just stay sitting there and listen to the one person who hurt me the most tell me that what I chosen to do with my life wasn't going to make me happy. I couldn't just bare letting this guy, tell me that I was making a mistake. Who was he to do such thing. He had no right, he had said it himself, and still pretended I was going to listen to him. Listen to _him_? Him who _left me_?

I didn't think so.

"Rose!" Scorpius called out to me later, after I had jumped off from my seat and made my way to the door.

I walked out of the club into a chilly night at a dark, empty London alley way. I didn't know what time it was, but I was sure it was late. At the end of the alley I could see one of London's main Avenues. I thought that maybe getting lost was probably what I needed to find enough peace of mind before going back to the Hotel. I couldn't just show up as upset as I was.

"You were the one who left me!" I then heard behind me and suddenly stopped walking.

That _brat_...

"How dare you?" I turned to face him.

"How dare I? It's the truth!" He yelled standing about ten feet from me. "You took a bag, packed your clothes and left!"

How could he say that? How could he blame me for something that never happened? For something _he_ did.

"I went to my cousin's wedding, you prick!" I yelled and I could feel my face getting hot in anger. "I came back to you three days later and you were gone!"

"What?" he asked dumbfounded.

I stood there with my face red, my fists closed tightly and my eyes burning, watching the blonde wizard realize he was accusing me for _his_ crime. I tried to breathe evenly, but the anger wouldn't let me.

"No..." he said then, his voice only a fraction as loud as it normally was. "I-I didn't think you'd-"

"But I did, I did and you were gone," I replied, not really wanting to keep talking about it.

It had been the worst time of my life. I had been heartbroken before, when we all thought my father would be forever lost in a different time, but nothing, absolutely nothing had ever felt so horrible to me than Scorpius disappearing.

It took all my self-control not to let my eyes water at the reminder of a empty home.

I had actually thought back then that all he needed was time. Time to calm back down and come back to me, but he didn't. He had left, leaving me no trace to follow him. He had deserted me, it was as simple as that: he had given up on me. I cried seventy nights in a row, I counted them. I lost my appetite, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything but to stare at the same spot by the door, hoping he would appear there any second.

He never did.

I lost myself in despair. I tried everything I could to locate him, but he had vanished like smoke. They told me at the Unit that he had just quit, they didn't even know the real reason. They said he had left a note saying he couldn't do it anymore, cleared his locker and left. I paid his father a visit, but he didn't know either. I contacted everyone I could. I called his cousin Thatcher, I called Luke, I called Elle, I even called Charlotte, and none of them even knew he had gone away.

I gave up eventually, by the time his pillow didn't smell like him anymore.

"Rose," I heard Scorpius call out softly when I turned around to walk away, like he had. "Rose!"

I felt his hand close around my wrist in his attempt to stop me and make me face him again. When I did turn, I saw his eyes so clear, like if he was fighting the tears just like me. But I tried not to care. It would have been silly of me to give him that much importance at this point in my life. I could see in his face that he needed an explanation, a story, but was too unsettled to ask for it.

"I waited six months for you to come back," I started, determined not to cry, though I wasn't able to hold my determination all the way. "But you disappeared from the face of the earth. You were nowhere to be found."

I felt the tears suddenly falling down my cheeks. I knew my voice would crack if I spoke again, but I needed to end it. Tell him what he needed to know and finally be free of the burden all that pain had caused.

"You didn't leave a note, you didn't send a message, you left me to rot in uncertainty."

"Rose," he said in the softest of tones, and I could tell he was slowly breaking.

"I was foolish enough to think it was just a silly argument. I was stupid enough to think that it would all be fine after a couple of days," I cried, not really caring anymore if I seemed weak. "I even convinced myself that I didn't have to marry you. That marriage wasn't going to make me happy, that you were."

I didn't really want to go on, so I turned my back to him one more time and meant to keep walking, but he spoke again.

"I'm so sorry, Rose," he whispered desperately.

I didn't turn to face him. I knew that if I did, I would never let it all go. I knew that if I stared at his silver eyes, suddenly nothing would matter, and I couldn't do that. Because I was getting married, I was now loyal to someone else. He had lost me the moment he decided not to turn back.

"No," I replied, my back still to him, before I walked out of him for the last time. "You don't get to be sorry."

**.**

**OOO**

**.**

"You look beautiful, sweetheart."

I looked up at my dad and saw him smiling down at me with those intense blue eyes of his. I smiled back as I could. I had felt rather nauseous all morning and I couldn't quite understand why.

"Thank you, dad."

We stood at the closed doors that lead from the ball room to the patio, where the wedding was taking place. Apparently all guests where already sitting and waiting for us while we waited for my mum to let us know when to come out.

"Dad?" I ventured after a few seconds. "When you married mum, were you scared?"

I heard him sigh in endearment while I stared at the still closed doors, feeling like someone had cursed me with a shaking spell.

"No, I wasn't," he replied sincerely. "After a war, getting married was nothing close to being scary."

"Was there a moment, in all these years, that you thought that it could end?"

"Plenty, actually," dad replied and I could hear discomfort in his normally comforting voice. "Every time we went to the Hospital, I felt that she would be better off without having to take care of me."

I then looked up at him to find his eyes on the same doors mine had been seconds before. I guessed I understood why he said that. If I had been on his place, I would have probably felt like I was ruining my family's lives. But being on the other side of the line, I never wished him to feel that way, not back then, not ever.

"Your mum and I used to fight a lot when you were just toddlers," he confessed smiling sadly at the memories while he placed a hand over the arm I had hooked to his. "It was hard for us to get along, and I honestly didn't know the reason for that. It wasn't until you turned six that after one terrible fight, that I found the answer."

I stared at him while he found the words to say something he probably never said out loud.

"We didn't know peace, we grew up during a war and suffered the aftermath quite nastily. So, I thought that maybe what we were doing was coming up with any excuse to create conflict between us, to fight purposely" he said. "To bicker was what brought us together in the first place. And maybe, somewhere within ourselves, we thought that bickering would keep us together."

"How did you fix it?"

"We just talked it through," he said smiling as he looked back at me, "And decided to get used to peace, instead of waiting for another tragedy to happen."

I stared at my father's blue eyes and I could swear that for a second they looked watery. He then looked away and kissed my hand before addressing me again.

"Are you worried?" he asked. "Of that happening to Claude and yourself?"

"A bit," I replied, but had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that I wasn't being truthful.

"Or are you trying to figure out the reason Scorpius and you never got back on the horse?"

I looked back at him and saw him still smiling, thought his smile didn't inspire me to smile back, it only made me feel like crying.

"I don't think we could have, even talking it through," I said looking away.

"I'll tell you a secret, Rosie," dad whispered in my ear, probably smiling still. "Malfoys are very good with words, until it's time to talk feelings."

At that I finally found it in myself to smile. But I didn't feel any better inside.

What my father had just told me, only made me realize he too thought I was meant to be with Scorpius. And I honestly didn't get it. How could that have been true, when it all turned to ashes so quickly? We never had the will to work things through, did we? We couldn't even talk about it without making another fight out of it, it seemed.

I tried not to think anymore about what had happened the night before, as the doors to the patio opened up and my dad and I started walking ahead.

I put a fake smile on my face as my eyes ran through the guests' faces, all turned to look at us. I didn't find his blonde hair, or his silver eyes. I couldn't spot his slightly upward cornered lips, or his dandy nose. He wasn't there. It seemed he had taken our last conversation for what it was and left again.

But this time I wasn't crying his absence, this time I wouldn't miss him. This time I would be happy he left. I would he happy with someone who loved me enough to stay with me always. Because I was sure Scorpius did love when he left, but not enough to fight for what we had. Claude wasn't like that, I knew he would do anything for me, even loving me when I didn't deserved it.

Soon I stood in front of Claude, just after my father had given me away. I looked at his handsome face and smiled. This was it. I would only have to say 'I do' and then it would be over, I would have been married and finally ready to be happy. I looked at my mum as a tear fell down her cheek while she smiled at me and clutched my dad's hand. But just as we were about to turn I caught a glimpse of silver.

There he was, standing further behind the last row of seats, looking straight at me with those cold silver eyes of his. I tried reading the expression of his face, if he was angry, sad or just didn't care, but I couldn't. Claude had gotten hold of my hand and was motioning me to turn. I smiled at him once more as he touched my hand to his lips and kissed it, before we turned to face the priest in charge of marrying us.

He started with a poem Claude's mother, Amelie, had chosen for us. I tried paying attention to the old bold wizard, but knowing, no, _feeling_, Scorpius' gaze on my back was getting me nervous.

Why was he there? Did he really have to make us both go through this much discomfort?

"Do you, Claude Dubois, take Rose Weasley as your eternal partner, in sickness and health, to protect and love, until death parts you?" The priest then said sooner than I had expected.

"I do," Claude replied.

We turned to face one another and he then took my wedding ring from his best man and placed on my finger. We watched along with our guests for a couple of seconds before the priest spoke again. The ring had stayed put, which showed every member of my family that the French bloke and I did love each other, and that we were not making a mistake. But wrongfully enough, I didn't feel relieved, in fact I felt even more nervous than before, which was completely mad.

"Do you, Rose Weasley, take Claude Dubois as your eternal partner, in sickness and health, to protect and love, until death parts you?" the priest spoke to me before I could find out the reason to my growing anxiety.

"I do," I replied, taking Claude's ring from Lily and placing it on his finger while I tried to keep a smile on my face.

I didn't feel any relieve then either, and I was more confused than ever. I knew that a magical marriage was tense at the time of the exchange, but the pressure and the tension that should have been relieved by now, only felt like they were building up.

Before I came out of my room, my hands had been cold and shaky, now they were sweaty, I had goosebumps and felt the need to take many breathes in a short amount of time.

"Now, by the power invested in me by the Magically United Community, I pronounce you, husband and wife," the priest concluded by drawing out his wand.

Just as he touched the wand to our holding hands, were our rings were placed, I thought to myself that maybe I was probably still nervous because it wasn't over yet. The priest had to seal the rings with magic and bond us in unity.

But the old wizard didn't have the chance to.

The very second his wand touched our still clutched hands, both rings shattered completely and fell to the floor in one small rain of dust.

I knew people had reacted in a collective gasp. I knew they were all staring at the scene in horror. But none of that mattered.

Because it suddenly made sense to me. I now knew why every step taken throughout the ceremony hadn't felt like it should have. It was simply because it had been a _meaningless act_. The vows weren't taken through magic, they had just been empty promises. The rings had been false, and therefore the spell that was supposed to bond us had broken them. Only artefacts made by goblins could survive such powerful spells.

Why? Why weren't the rings real? Who had exchanged them for the muggle-fabricated ones that were now scattered across the floor like glitter?

I looked up to Claude expecting to find just as much confusion dressing his face, as I knew mine wore.

"Let me explain," he let out the most desperate whisper I had ever heard, and then I understood.

I dropped his hand trying to maintain myself calmed, but it had been useless. As the crowd of very confused and outraged guests started standing up and asking each other what the bloody hell was happening, I started walking back down the aisle, in a desperate attempt to be left alone. Those ten seconds that took me to get from one end of the narrow space between two row of seats, to the other, felt like ages. It even seemed as if time had decided to go by slower, making my humiliation last longer that it should have.

I opened the doors that would take me back to the ball room, completely unaware that the blonde wizard that should have never come back watched me go in, desperately lost for words. I walked as far as my feet would go, and unfortunately it hadn't been far enough. I felt myself stop at the middle of the room, now decorated to hold the reception for the ceremony. I heard someone walk in after me and closing the doors, keeping all the chaos locked behind us for a little while.

"How could you?" I asked Claude as I heard him approach me.

Yes, I knew it was him. The way his footsteps echoed lightly was rather unique and too familiar not to be his.

"I-"

"Why?" I cut him off, turning slowly to face him. "Why would you do something like that to me?"

He sighed heavily and took a couple of steps more, standing at least ten feet from me, before replying.

"I just wanted us to be together forever," he replied so sadly that a tiny part of my brain was screaming for me to forgive him and go back out there to get married. But the rest of me was stronger, and its anger was greater than any sympathy I felt.

"Under _fakes_ vows?"

"My vow wasn't fake, Rose," he said, as I was starting to think that maybe Al had been right all this time, maybe he never had really loved me.

"Do you even love me?"

"Yes, I do, with all my heart."

"Then, why did you do that?"

I couldn't understand. If he loved me, then why did he give me a fake ring, one that would never prove anything at all. Or maybe he thought _I_ had something to hide, something no one would ever know if its only apparent prove was_ fake_.

"If I had given you this, your real wedding ring," Claude then said, taking out a silver ring from his suit's pocket. "We wouldn't have married anyway."

He really thought I... That I...

"I love you, Rose and I want to be with you, even if you don't love me back."

I stared at the brunette French wizard standing in front of me, not wanting to believe what he looked so sure of.

"How can you say that?"

"It's the truth," he said. "You know, I know that you know it somewhere deep inside."

I kept looking at him in disbelief as he took another step towards me.

"You've never told me," he said in a voice so sadly desperate that my heart ached for him. "You always reply 'me too' when I say it, but you never say it yourself. You're still as distant now as you were when we first met, back when you still hoped Malfoy would surf up from hell."

I wanted to tell him that wasn't true, but even thinking about it felt like a lie.

After what I had gone through with Scorpius, it took me quite sometime to put myself out there again. It took me so much effort to trust anyone again, or to put my heart in the line. Though, apparently, I never really had.

Claude took a few more steps towards me, until he was only a foot away.

"You can't let go of what you had with him," he said taking my right hand in his. "I'm not an idiot. I know when I'm not someone's reason to stay up at night thinking of good memories."

"I lov-"

I never got to finish that sentence, for the French had tricked me. I had let my guard down, letting him take my hand. He took advantage of that and just as I had started to say what he claimed I had never said before, he slid my real wedding ring onto my finger.

And I felt it fall off.

"No, you don't," he stated what the clinging noise on the floor proved. "You love him, _that's_ the truth."

I felt myself lost for words as I watched Claude take two steps backwards and smile at me one more time before a single tear left a wet trace down his cheek. Then, he turned on his spot and Disapparated to only Merlin knew where, away from me, away from all of this, leaving me at the middle of the ball room by myself. I stared at the spot in the air where his face had been seconds earlier and felt the need to cry.

But nothing would come out of me. It almost felt like I had dried completely and was unable to shed any more tears ever again. Although that was most likely my imagination. Maybe I couldn't cry because deep inside there was nothing I needed to mourn. Maybe, unconsciously, I felt I hadn't lost anything.

I tried not believing that, because it would only have meant that Claude had been right. And maybe I had known it all long, but refused to admit it to myself.

Failing to cry yet another abandonment, I turned my back to the empty spot I had been staring at and started walking ahead. I didn't know where to go, I just needed to get away from all this rubbish.

"Rose?" I heard behind me, and came to a halt once more.

"Go away," I told the voice I wished I could just forget.

"No," he said softly.

I closed my eyes in a broken gesture and felt them sting with upcoming tears. Of all the things I wanted to do right now, talking to Scorpius was the last. But I couldn't put it away any longer.

So I took a deep breathe and turned, hoping for the tears to sting but not to fall.

"What do you want?" I asked, my voice breaking at the very end of that question.

"I just want to know if you're alright," he said shoving his hands in the pockets of his trousers and looking down at the floor.

"Well, I'm not," I cried, the tears falling without my consent.

"Do you want me to get him?"

"I'm certain you're the last person he'll want to see," I replied, feeling this aching feeling in my chest and a sudden need to scream my lungs out.

"Do you want someone to get him?"

He then, finally looked up at me. I stared at his silver eyes and for a fraction of a second, they took me back to those days when I felt that I could stare him forever. I watched him watch me, and with every inch of his face that my eyes walked through, the more my heart ached.

"What for?" I asked the blonde wizard and smiled sadly at what I knew was true. "He's right."

I watched Scorpius blink twice as he tried to understand the conclusion of a debate he hadn't been part of. A debate that had been going on within myself without even me knowing.

I had loved him too much to replace him. Looking at him standing right in front of me, I realized that I still did, and I would never stop.

Because he was beautiful, inside and out. Because he had been there for me when no one else knew I was in need. Because his silver eyes had stolen my heart since we first kissed. Because his smile made me happy. Because his frame had been the only one that ever fitted perfectly with mine in an embrace.

Because I truly loved him, and true love never died.

"I could never let go of you," I admitted out loud to both him and myself. "I could never forget the way you made me feel, how happy I had been with you."

I felt the tears come one after the other, giving me no chance to dry them off. My heart ached more than it ever had as I realized that I really wanted to hold him and kiss him again, but couldn't.

"But I don't think I can forget how much you hurt me either," I told him against my deepest wishes.

I turned my back to him for what I believed would be the last time and meant to walk away for good, but he didn't let me.

"Rose, wait," he then said, closing the distance between us and trapping me in his arms before speaking against my bare neck. "Give me another chance, I beg you."

"Let me go Scorpius, please," I cried but had no will to make him release me from his ever so comforting grip.

"No," he breathe against me just as I felt a tear land on the shoulder he had placed his head on. "I've done that before. I am not making the same mistake."

"Scorpius, please," I begged him, feeling his blonde hair stick to my damp cheek.

"I love you, please, let me make it all better."

"You can't!" I couldn't take it anymore, he was killing me slowly. "You can't, don't you understand!"

I finally got the will to slip from his hold and meant to keep walking, but Scorpius took me from the forearm softly.

"Rose," he whispered one last time with such a desperate look on his face, I could feel my heart breaking for him.

I tried to tell him that I couldn't do this, not now, but the words wouldn't come out. I could barely breathe, a knot had formed in my throat again and my heart was beating so quickly, I thought I would die. His grip was so gentle, that one quick pull freed me from him.

I looked at his handsome face once more, twisted in misery, and wished to die, before I turned on the spot and Disapparated away.


	5. Kiss It Better

Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series, any its character or settings, all you recognize belongs to J. K. Rowling.

A/N: I know, I know, long over due, I have an explanation though. My laptop broke almost two months ago and the dude that was supposed to repair it took quite a while to do so. Needless to say, I lost what I had written till then and had to start again.

BUT, the re-write turned out to be just right, because it let me think things through a lot better this time around and **I came up with a really long chapter, AND... drum-roll please... an idea for a sixth chapter! I know that means you'll have to wait for yet another update, but I'm gonna give you the finale of a lifetime, so please bare with me, yeah?**

**It's not over yet! :P**

Anyway, have a happy reading and don't forget to revieww!

"**Kiss It Better"**

**.**

**Scorpius**

**.**

I stared at the blank piece of parchment sitting on the dark wooden desk in front of me. I dipped my quill into the ink bottle for a third time in the last ten minutes, but once again found myself unable to start writing. I looked up at the Manor's gardens out the window yet again and tried to put my thoughts in order, but failed. I placed the quill down, knowing that I could try starting a million times and still words wouldn't be enough to tell her what I needed to.

I stood from my desk and walked over to my old bed, slumping onto it. I sighed staring at the plain white ceiling above me, not really knowing myself what it was that I wanted to say to Rose.

It had been nine weeks since I had last seen her, back in September, when my world had been taken apart bit by bit for a third time in this life. It still ached every time I thought of her telling me she would never forget what we had had, and that she was unwilling to ever forgive me for what I had done to her. I had felt a new level of heartbreak, it had been torture like I had never imagined could exist.

To know she still loved me the way I loved her and that it didn't matter, was like dying and repeating that same death over and over again in everlasting eternity.

I needed to make things right. I needed to fight for her, I needed to give her a good enough reason not to leave me to rot in rejection. But I didn't know how.

Writing her a letter was only a pitiful attempt to know if she was willing to talk to me now, two months after she had had to face the fact that the life she had decided she wanted to live had never been hers to claim in the first place.

At the reminder of the whole wedding fiasco, I couldn't help but think about Claude and his almost flawless plan to keep Rose and himself together. I guessed I understood the reason he had tried to cheat magic, but I couldn't quite tell the reason he had done it the way he had. He should have known that muggle rings would never carry out to cover up his lie. He was a healer, he was smart, he must have known. And then again, he cheated in a way that made me think he wanted to get caught. Maybe he was testing Rose in a way. Or maybe he just was delusional enough to not see things clearly. He, undoubtedly, knew Rose didn't love him back. Perhaps he was so focused on the fact that he wouldn't let that stop him, that he didn't step back to think his plan did engage a flaw, and a big one at that.

I tried not to compare myself to the French. I knew that what he had done had taken the courage I never seemed to have possessed. I knew that if I had been on his place, I wouldn't have done the same. I would have let her go, like I always ended up doing. I wondered if that made me better than the brunette or just plain stupid.

What was it about me that preferred to give up instead of fighting for what I wanted? Why did I always have to be the one to step down the happiness ladder and let someone else take my walk upstairs?

Did that mean I was still a coward, after all these years of thinking myself better than that? Had the French done the one thing I could never do, no matter how much I wished to?

Did it even matter now?

No, it didn't. Because even if I had walked into the Infinity Hotel determined to get Rose back, I never had anything to offer her anyway.

I had been gone, I had taken my life, wrapped it in a dirty piece of cloth and dumped it down the plank. I had nothing but regrets, while the French had the determination to put the world at her feet.

I knew Rose wasn't the kind of witch one could buy with galleons and villas. She was the kind of witch who saw and judged people for their dreams and hopes, for their goals and courage to get them. I had no hope, no dreams, no goals and no courage. All I had was a low position at a muggle office and an apartment with no signs of endearment. I had a hideout, not a life, and she deserved more than that.

Even _I_ deserved more than that, but that hadn't stop me from ruining everything I had anyway.

I had lost the will to have dreams and goals. After she left, nothing had made any sense to me. I had no passion left within me, it felt like she had taken that with her in her purple travelling bag three years ago.

I tried not to mind the suppressing feeling on my stomach and the sudden lump on my throat as the thoughts of my despair filled my mind. I wondered the reason I had been such an idiot. Why had I left? Why hadn't I given her the benefit of the doubt? Why had I assumed she had left to never come back? Had I lost all hope in us back then? Had _I_ given up on _her_? Had I, unconsciously, hoped for it all to come to an end?

I would be lying if I said it hadn't been like that, because I didn't really know.

"Son?" I suddenly heard at the other side of the wooden door, just as I felt like dying. "Supper's ready."

I sighed heavily before ripping my eyes off the ceiling and walking out of my room. My father had certainly come a long way from his old manners. But I didn't know if he had bothered getting me downstairs himself because he felt different towards our house-elf now, or if he was just worried about me. It wasn't like it mattered anyway.

"Are you not hungry?" my older reflection asked, looking at me with a pair of rather intimidating silver eyes.

"Not really."

"You should eat, at least your greens," he said distractedly.

I looked up to the old wizard enjoying his meal, and I couldn't help but smile at him. What he had said was exactly what my mother used to tell me when I was smaller and lost my appetite quite often. It was a rather funny scene, watching my dad do what he was never really supportive of. Long ago, when not hungry, my mother would convince me to eat my vegetables before letting me run off to do whatever that was keeping me from eating. My father had never agreed on such actions and would always tell her that she was spoiling me. Who would have guessed that fourteen years after her death, he would understand.

I stuffed my mouth with salad and soon enough mumbled a quiet 'excuse me' before standing up.

"Your broom was sent to me almost two years ago," my father suddenly spoke, just before I got my hand on the knob to walk out. "They sent it to your flat in Ireland at first but no one was there."

I stood there, my back to the blonde wizard, wondering the reason he was telling me that. It didn't take me long to realize that this conversation wasn't about the broom, it wasn't even about the fact that I ditched the only thing he had giving in about. It was about the fact that the old man had received his only son's broom with no real explanation or notice about his whereabouts, and remained in the dark for years. If I had been him, I would have worried, and I wondered, even if I knew better, if he had worried about me.

"All those years of being tracked down by Thatcher proved to be useful, didn't they?"

I turned at his words, and saw him not eating anymore, but just staring at the spot my head had been minutes ago, when I had been at the table.

To be honest, I didn't think I had handled anything right in the past years, starting with the way I went away, up to the way I came back. I had known deep inside that I would do more damage than what had been done to me. I tried those three years not to wonder how my family and friends would learn about my disappearance or how they would feel about it. I tried not to picture them all worrying, or even worse, _looking_ for me. My father was right. All those years that Thatcher had been able to track me down had been like training. I had never ran away wishing not to be found before, not really. I had never felt the need to just disappear up until three years ago.

"I'm sorry, dad," I said quietly, hoping my father wouldn't take my actions personally.

"It's alright," he replied smiling slightly, "I raised you to survive. Even when worry made itself present, it didn't matter. Because I knew you'd make it out alive."

I smiled half-heartedly at that. I guessed he did raise me to take all and keep standing, but I doubted I had done that. I had fallen, and hard. But maybe telling him that was probably unnecessary. Something told me he knew it himself.

"I'm not planing on staying for long," I replied, and watched his silver eyes fall upon my face for a split second.

"I know that," he said, looking back ahead. "You never came back in the first place."

I stared at my father and it ached to know he too seemed to have noticed that all I was now, was nothing more than an empty shell.

I watched as the man in front of me stood from his seat, leaving his dinner half way eaten. He walked over to me with such grace that I found myself envying him like I used to years ago. He stood in front of me and placed both his hands on my shoulders.

"Find yourself again, son," he said coolly, his eyes meeting mine. "Find yourself and come back to what will always be yours."

He didn't say anything else. He just dropped his hands and walked out. I waited about a couple of minutes before I walked out too, feeling this huge urge to just run away again, run away from everything I had screwed up.

I walked over to the Manor's foyer and opened the heavy oak doors, looking for the closest way out. I ran towards the iron gate, not really caring I had left the doors open, and even less about the fact that I was acting like a ten-year-old that got scolded. Nearly half way to the road that would take me far, far away from this messed up world I, myself, had created, it suddenly hit me.

Once a quitter, _always_ a quitter. That was the way it went, didn't it?

That was the only thing I seemed to be able to accomplish lately, to quit. To detach myself from everything when things didn't go as planned.

When? When had I become like this? Had I always been this way? Had I ever really grown up? Had I ever truly believed that running away from things wasn't right? Or had I been just telling myself that enough times to believe it, even when deep inside I knew it would never be like that?

I stopped running, and as I caught my breath, I thought about how much disgust I felt towards myself, towards everything I was and ever had been. I felt so ashamed of everything I had done. I tried not to think of how disappointing I did turn out to be, not only as a son, but as a wizard, as a boyfriend, as a friend... as a human being.

I turned to face the manor and watched as twilight painted the dark stones orange and pink. I felt the cool November air hit my face. I closed my eyes and let myself fall back onto the emerald carpet of freshly cut grass, and wished once more to simply stop breathing and die.

But would that be of any good? Would that make me less miserable? Would that make her forgive me? Would that give me back a reason to stay alive?

No. It would only be the pathetic ending of a pathetic moron.

I spent what felt like hours lying there on the prickly grass, secretly hoping for something to drop from the sky and kill me.

And something did drop to hit me on the face. A raindrop. One after another they came, soon making my clothes and hair stick to my skin. I stayed there, letting the rain wash over me. Unwillingly, I thought of a November evening just like this nine years ago, an evening that had felt like the end of times too. I thought of her and her red umbrella. I thought of the reason I had been lying on the Quidditch pitch, hoping for a lighting to strike me. I thought of a night just like that five years prior. I thought of my mother and of the disappointment I had become. I thought of it all and let myself drop water of my own.

For the first time in fourteen years, I let myself cry my despair away. I let it all go. I cried like the twelve year old that had lost his mother. I cried like the seventeen year old who had lost his most treasured dream. I cried like the twenty-three year old that had lost the love of his life. I cried like the twenty-six year old that had realized he had died inside long ago. I cried for what I had had. For what I had lost. For what I would never have again.

And then, I stopped.

Because crying would solve nothing. Because crying wasn't any better than turning the other cheek. It was as useful as running away: it made it all less heavy, but it didn't make it go away.

I sat up, shivering from head to toe, wondering if I'd ever find myself again. I looked up again at the manor, and made out my father's room. The lights went off a second after I had found it. Despite everything he had gone through, he had made it alive, hadn't he?

Well, it was just about time that this Malfoy did what Malfoys do, and survive too.

I stood up from the now slippery ground and walked over back to the manor. Every step felt heavier than the last, as if I was walking uphill on a seemingly flat land. It didn't matter though, because every step I took, was towards that path I had drifted off too long ago. I longed to be different, as so a difference I was determined to make. Each yard felt like a triumph, a triumph against the urge to disappear off under a bridge or somewhere else where no one would ever find me, where I didn't have to face the consequences I had written for myself.

I kept walking, completely drenched, until I reached the mansion. But I didn't go in. I walked over to the back yard, where the shed stood, looking weak against a rain that suddenly got violent. I opened the old lock with a simple spell and walked it.

I didn't have to look for what I had gone in to get. It was the only thing visible to me in that small wooden room. I could see it vibrating, as if it knew I had come back for it.

Just like wands, brooms have life of their own. They don't chose their wizard, but once they've been ridden, they respond to no other commander. They have special connexions to their owners. A broom will always be faithful to the wizard who chose it, even when the person dies, the broom will always remember whom it belong to, and would not respond to any other as well as they did to their first wizard.

I reached to touch the slender wooden bar, and I could feel my fingertips tickling. As soon as I closed my fist lightly around the stick, I could feel it, its excitement, its wish to be ridden again.

Smiling, I took the broomstick out of the case my father had put it in for protection, and walked back out, where pouring rain welcomed me. Without a second thought, I mounted the magical object and kicked the ground with a very much appreciated feeling of familiarity rumbling from inside me.

I flew up, not minding the circumstances I was flying through. The wind hurt my skin and the rain prickled me like small needles. But nothing mattered, absolutely nothing, because I could feel something else, something that wasn't on the outside. I could feel the warm sensation on my belly that flying had always produced. I felt excited, I felt joy.

I laughed out loud just as I turned the broom to go forward, twirling then my way through the skies. I had forgotten the freedom, I had forgotten the peace. I had missed my broomstick's graceful, smooth movements. I had missed what it felt like to be in the air. It was overwhelming even, it felt as if I had been missing a part of me for all these years and I had finally reattached it to myself.

As I flew around as fast as I could, brushing the top of the forest further behind the manor, I felt unstoppable. A sudden fire ignited within me and for a moment I felt like no time had passed. I let go of the broom and raised my arms in a sigh of victory the same way I had three years ago, when we had won the World Cup semi-finals. And it was then, when I closed my eyes and screamed, that I knew, I was ready to come back to life.

_I was alive_.

I was alive and ready to take back what was, what had always been, and would always be _mine_.

After a few more minutes of teenage recklessness, I finally made my way back home. I landed near the shed. I walked into the wooden construction and noticed the rain wasn't violet any longer. I put the broomstick back in its case, and I could feel it calmed, as if it knew that I would never leave it behind again. And I wasn't. It had given me back what I thought I would never feel again without Rose, so I wasn't going to let it go.

"I'm going to take back my life," I told the broom or myself, I wasn't sure. "I promise."

I closed the case and walked out of the shed.

I had made plenty of promises in my life, and had broken one too many, including the most important ones. But this, this wasn't a promise, it was an oath. I was going to take my life back. I was going to dig myself out of the hole I had buried my life in. I was taking control again. I was reclaiming whatever courage I once had had and make it all right, one aspect at the time.

**.**

**OOO**

**.**

"That's all I can do for you."

"That's more than enough."

"Don't disappoint me."

"I won't."

I watched my old team-mate, dressed in his green and gold Quidditch robes, smile at me before reaching to shake my hand.

I was sitting at an office than not long ago had been mine. It no longer held anything I could recognize. Maximillian Cervi sure had been busy modifying it after he was pronounced Captain of the Ireland National Quidditch Team.

I watched the seeker sign some papers here and there before tugging them towards me.

"Your try-out will be next week, if that's fine with you," he said as I dipped the quill he gave me in ink and signed.

"Since when do candidates have a say in their try-outs date?"

"They don't," the Italian wizard replied when I handed the papers back, "But you're still a World Champion, so _you_ do."

I smiled slightly to myself at his words, and decided to voice my worries to my old friend.

"I haven't played in a long while, Cervi. My skills are no better than when I first tried out for Mark Boyle."

"Even back then, you were superb," Max insisted as he addressed me with a rather warm smile.

I stayed quiet for a few seconds while Max signed a few more papers. It was a funny scene, watching him handle paperwork in such a professional way. Back in the day, when I was the one in charge of most of the legal and administrating issues, Maximillian Cervi would tease me a lot and try to convince me to leave all those things aside for a while quite often. I guessed he now understood just how important that kind of job was, now that he couldn't allow himself to do what he always tried pushing me into doing.

"You need to find a place here again, by the way," he suddenly said, bringing me back to the present time.

"I'll worry about that if I get in," I replied coolly.

"_When_ you get in."

"Shouldn't you root for the young ones? Or, I don't know, appear less impartial?" I asked the seeker, amused by his so overly-obvious wishes to get me on the team again.

"I've seen recordings of every try-out taken throughout Britain this season, and I have not found one beater that can beat you," he replied looking back at some other papers he, apparently, still had to sort out today.

"You're too kind," I mocked him as I let out one of those smirks that I so often used to use against him.

"Oh, sod off, Malfoy!" He replied when he looked up at me and realized I was making fun of his fondness towards my Quidditch skills.

I laughed slightly at the now annoyed Italian wizard before standing up and offering him a hand to shake.

"Thanks, Max."

"Get out," he replied smiling slightly and shaking my hand.

I walked out of Cervi's office and made my way back to the entrance of the Irish Quidditch Unit. As I walked towards the exit, my eyes drifted off to the series of Quidditch fields that the Unit owned. There were five: two of them were as small as a Quidditch pit could be according to minimal regulations and the other three were of the regulated size for official games. I watched as many wizards and witches trained and I couldn't help but imagine myself up there again.

I really had missed the game, more than I had actually been aware of last week, when I picked up my broom for the first time in three years.

I kept walking, with a smile on my face, until I reached the Disapparation Point by the building's entrance. I stood there for a few seconds, deciding where to go from there.

My father had told me that I could stay at the manor for as long as I wanted. Such offer sound pretty wicked, knowing all I had left was that dull, grey apartment at the other side of Dublin. That place had never been and would never be my home. But I wasn't sure that staying with my father was the right thing to do. I was twenty-six years old, I needed my own place to call home, I needed a place to settle down, a place I that could offer me a life of my own, not just a prolongation of my teenage years.

I made up my mind surprisingly fast once I laid out all the things that I needed. So I turned on the spot and apparated back at the only place in the world, other than Hogwarts, that had brought me true happiness. A place that had been my only home, a place that long ago, I had decided to never set a foot in.

I looked around me, at the Dublin flat I had left three years ago with no intention to come back ever again.

The wooden floor had a thick layer of dust, the furniture had equally dusty sheets covering them, the fireplace was closed and the curtains left all sunlight outside the windows. There were no pictures at the coffee table by the fireplace. The portraits that used to hang by the walls had been taken down and the many plants we used to have were also gone.

I walked further into the flat, to check the kitchen. It looked painfully empty and deprived of life. The cabinets were all empty and the dinning table was covered with yet another dusty sheet. All the windows were closed, the fridge was unplugged and the water filter was empty.

Trying not to let the desperate look of abandonment the kitchen displayed get tome, I walked over to the study, rather scared of what was waiting for me at the other side of the closed door. I reached for the knob, but didn't find it in myself to open the room.

The study had been _hers_. It had been the place where she would let everything go and relax, her refuge. I didn't want to go in and see every shelf empty, with no trace of her memory. I wouldn't be able to stand walking into that room, which was so essentially hers, looking as dead and unhappy as the rest of the flat.

So, I dropped my hand from the knob and turned to walk upstairs.

Most of the rooms on the second floor were just as forgotten as the rooms downstairs. Even our old bedroom had been emptied and left to remain just as abandoned. I stood by the door and felt a huge urge to get out of that place. It seemed it was just as lonely as I had been when I had left. I wondered if Rose had been the one to clear everything out, or if someone else had. I wondered if she had had the heart to do it. I tried to picture myself in her place, and realized I would have probably left the same way I had, leaving everything in its place, not having neither the will not the stomach to store our life away.

Feeling really unsettled, I left the second story and walked back downstairs. I stopped half way through and stared at the study door from the stair's landing. For some reason I now felt that I needed to get in there, whether I wanted to or not, it didn't really matter.

At first I had come here because this was the only place I thought of when I asked myself where my home was. But I was starting to think that maybe all I wanted was some closure, to be ready to farewell the life I had had here and prepare for a new one.

Yes, a _new_ life.

The one I had had before, really wasn't worth taking back. I was still a coward and a pleaser in that life, so I was going to get myself a new one, where Quidditch still mattered, where I'd let myself be happy, where Rose wasn't the only reason I had to stay alive.

I still loved her, and I always would. But before I could think of getting her back, I had to get myself back onto my own feet. Because maybe the reason I had crumbled down was because I hadn't been the one keeping me up throughout all those years. _She_ had been the one keeping me going, and that must have been tiring. Maybe that had been the reason it all went downhill, and neither of us had seen it in time to do something about it.

I was determined to do something now. I was determined to make sure I had a life solid enough to invite her in, this time to be the love of my life, not the drive to keep me stable.

I took a deep breath and walked the rest of the steps downstairs. I made my way through the dust to the study and without a second thought opened the wooden door.

What I saw in there was something I would have never expected to see.

Her books were still there, collecting dust as the shelves were too tall to let themselves be covered with blankets or sheets. Most of the furniture was pushed back to a single wall, while almost the rest of the stance was filled with boxes. They all were labelled, and all we had owned was still there. I had thought she had given everything away, to keep herself from remembering how much of an arse I had been. It ached to know she hadn't giving us up, but instead she stored our stuff away, as if she had been trying to keep our life out of sight, but still there, safe.

I walked over to where the boxes stood, all wearing as much dust as everything else in the flat. I looked around, but didn't see a box labelled with my name or hers, and wondered if she hadn't bothered keeping me. But then I caught a glimpse of one box labelled 'VALUABLES'.

The box seemed awfully out of place, since we had never purchased anything that could be considered that valuable to neither one of us. I walked over to the box and opened it with a simple spell. When I saw the content, my heart skipped a beat.

Inside laid all of the things I had left behind. Shoes, clothes and some other things I hadn't taken with me were there, placed neatly together. I could swear I felt my heart get smaller thinking of how she had bothered putting my belongings all together and label the box as valuable.

I wondered if she cried while doing it. I wished to believe that she hadn't, because it would be less upsetting to imagine her mad at me than crying for my actions. I wondered if she still thought all the things laying in front of me were still worth something.

I stared at the inside of the box and soon recognized the red leather photo album I claimed mine when I had been seventeen years old. I hadn't found it the day I left, so I didn't take it with me. I took it out of the box and opened it. As soon as I did, a handful of pictures fell out. I kneeled by the floor to pick them up, and then realized those pictures hadn't belong inside the album. They weren't my old family pictures, they were all the ones Rose and I had snapped in our six years together.

I took one of them and couldn't help but smile sadly at the memories.

I watched myself seven years younger, holding Rose tightly as we smiled. I recognized the background. That had been taken one Christmas we had decided to do all our Holiday's shopping at the Outline, back in the Dome. We had been so happy back then. Teddy's eldest, Remus, had been born during the time and we had been looking for baby clothes. That was the day we had talked about what we'd name our children when we had them. We had been so hopeful back then and it seemed so sad to me how ignorant we had been of our future. We had never seen it coming.

I tried to look at all the pictures, but it was difficult, ever so more than what I had imagined. So, I took them all and put them back inside the photo album. I stayed there, my knees against the dust and looked around.

It was then when I realized that I didn't really want to have a new life. I wanted to restore the study to its former glory and watch Rose read a book while she ran her fingers through my hair. I wanted to talk to her over a cup of hot cocoa during the winter. I wanted to watch her sleep on my lap. I wanted what I had had before I had lost all hope.

I didn't need a different life. If a difference needed to be made, it was within me. _I_ was the one who needed to change, not the world, not my home, not Quidditch, not her.

But _me_.

**.**

**Rose**

**.**

_I watched as the orange flames by the fireplace flickered with the heavy wind that came from the open windows._

_I sat at the same couch, like every other night, watching the fire die away while I waited for him to come back. I didn't need to look at the clock by the coffee table to know the time, it wasn't like it mattered. I felt numb with unfulfilled expectations, I felt hopeless, but still I sat by the couch, blinking slowly._

_I looked out one of the windows and watched as the sun came out and went back down in a few seconds. I watched the day shimmer with sunshine, before turning brown and filling the living room with dead leaves, just to turn dark in two seconds while a cold breeze blew snowflakes at my direction. I waited for spring to come after that, but it didn't. Just like him, it seemed the season wasn't one to bother showing itself to me._

_I turned my head back, but didn't look at the fireplace, I glanced at the foyer instead. Nothing happened, and sadly enough I didn't really expect much anymore. I closed my eyes wishing I could cry the despair away, but not one drop would come out. I kept my eyes closed and smiled lightly at the fact that that was the only way I would see his face again, through memories._

_I imagined him coming back for me, telling me he was nothing without me, even though I knew I was only lying to myself, only giving myself unjustified hope. I wished to keep fooling myself but it all had to stop. I had still many years to live, and imagining him still with me, could only last me so long._

_I opened my eyes, knowing he wasn't at the other side of my eyelids. But somehow I got it wrong._

_A pair of silver orbs and a smirk welcomed me._

_I blinked rapidly and smiled at the fact that his face, his ever so perfect face, was still in front of me. I didn't bother wondering why I hadn't hear him apparate, or walk over to where I was sitting. I didn't bother asking him the reason he left, or why he didn't come any sooner. Nothing mattered, because he was there, with me._

_I could be happy again._

_I flung my arms around him and held him tightly, wishing I never had to let him go. I felt his hands on my back and sighed at the touch I had missed dearly. I closed my eyes while I sunk my face against his shoulder and waited for him to say something, anything. But he didn't get the chance to._

I opened my eyes to find the sun blinding me with morning light. I blinked with difficulty and realized I was strangling my pillow in a dreamed embrace. I rolled over onto my belly and sighed heavily.

It wasn't the first time I had dreamt about waiting for Scorpius to come back. For the next year and a half after he had left, I had dreamt about him non-stop. But most of my dreams usually ended after I realized that Spring wasn't coming. Not one of the hundreds of them ever featured the silvery blonde wizard. This was the first time he had come back to me, in that dream world I had constructed around his existence.

I rolled back at sat up trying to get my eyes to adjust to the light. Then a light knock came from one of the windows. I jumped out of bed the second I recognized the deep dark brown owl at the other side of the glass.

"Baron!" I sighed in relief as I opened the window for the bird to come in.

I had been worried sick for the past three days, since the owl had taken off to what I had believed was to spread his wings for a little while. But he hadn't come back that evening.

I reached my arm to him so he could climb on it, but he didn't. He stretched one of his tiny legs and I noticed a letter tied to it.

Suddenly my heart started beating faster as I wondered if that letter came from the person I thought it came from. It had to be though, what other reason had Baron gone away, but because he had the feeling his master required of his presence?

I took the piece of parchment from the owl's leg and opened the neatly rolled letter. I almost cried at the sight of such familiar handwriting, the same I had longed to see a few years back, telling me he was alright.

_Dear Rose,_

_I thought long and hard about the things I wanted to tell you in this letter. Most of the times I tried starting, I wasn't able to write anything at all._

_I sincerely think that nothing I have to tell you will ever make up for the things I didn't._

_I'm sorry I left the way I did. I'm sorry for everything I've done to you, not only three years ago, but before that. I'm sorry I made you promises and didn't have the courage to keep them. I'm sorry I wasn't there enough for you. I'm sorry I didn't listen when you cried for help. I'm sorry for the many times I failed you._

_But most of all I'm sorry I ever let you go. I know I should have gone after you when you left to Albus' wedding, but deep inside I think I believed you'd be better off without me. Because I was only a fraction of what I used to be, I wasn't the boy you had fallen in live with. Something along the way changed me, and you had to suffer for that._

_I know it's probably too late, I know I have no right to ask you to take me back. But I'd like you to. Because you're the best part of me and I love you too much to live without you. Even when I have discovered that I can stand on my own feet and that I can fix the broken pieces of my life by myself, if you're not with me, then everything makes little sense._

_Maybe it's very optimistic of me, but I hope someday you'll forgive me, and let me make everything alright._

_Forever yours,_

_Scorpius_

Just as I finished the letter, a tear dropped onto the paper, smearing slightly his name. I stood by the window watching as the ink slipped through the parchment and felt the trace the tear left on my cheek starting to dry. I stared some more before my legs started to move and forced me to sit by the edge of the bed. A few minutes later, I finally tore my eyes off the letter to settle them on the window, where Baron stood still. He must have been waiting for me to write a reply to take back to the blonde wizard.

I thought of standing up and walking over to the desk, but I didn't do it.

What was I supposed to say to all the things he wrote? What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to feel? I still loved him, that much I knew. But I loved myself too, and I was certain I didn't want to put myself through so much pain again.

Did he deserve another chance? I guessed he did. But was I willing to give him that? I wasn't sure.

I had decided long ago, a year after he had left to be exact, that I wouldn't let absolutely anything or anyone do me any more harm. I had decided to live my life carefully, always thinking of myself first instead of wanting to please the people around me. I had decided that I'd have the first and last say in anything I did. I was done living for someone else. I was tired of breathing for two.

Back then I had come to the conclusion that if he could live without me, then I could also live without him. I was not going to be left behind again. I'd move forward from then on, and it didn't matter who crossed my way, because I was going to reach happiness on my own.

He hadn't given into anything I asked of him, so I decided that I would no longer ask anything from anyone. I would get what I wanted and whoever found themselves with me, could come along or not, it didn't matter to me anyway.

But now, when I had thought I had found the end of the tunnel, that I had found that person whom I could care deeply for, he turned out to be a liar. I had made yet another mistake, though it didn't hurt as much as I had thought it would. I should have known though, because nothing Claude could do to me would ever compare to the wounds Scorpius had inflicted on me. The French had left me with bruises and scratches, mostly consequences of humiliation. But Malfoy... Malfoy had torn me apart, inside out. He had taken who I had been, ripped it apart and didn't even bother to give me back the broken pieces in person. He had just left me to find myself massacred.

Just as I sadly remembered those darks days of my past, a sudden shrink reached my ears, and I realized Baron was tired of waiting.

"I have nothing for you to take back, your Majesty," I replied to the owl's complaints.

I watched him stare at me for a little while longer than he normally would, probably mad at me for such response. He then took flight and soon I lost sight of him in the distance. I kept staring at the skies through the open window for a few more minutes, before letting myself fall back against my bed. I stared at the ceiling, wishing it could speak and tell me what I should do.

Despite knowing the things I had promised to myself and proving them to work, it still felt rather naïve of me to think that any of it would ever work when it came to Scorpius Malfoy. Maybe it was silly of me, but deep inside I longed for him, no matter how much it could hurt me in the end. Honestly speaking, I did want to give us another go, but I was scared.

It took me so long to recover from the last time we had been us, that I doubted I still had any sense of self-healing in me anymore. I wasn't scared of letting him in again, I wasn't scared of him hurting me once more. I wasn't scared of him vanishing again even. I was scared of not being able to take it or find a reason to stay alive.

The last time I had to face the world on my own, it almost destroyed every bit of my will to keep living. If it happened again, I was certain that I would not be able to survive.

And the reason for that was rather simple, but I refused to admit it. Because I had lived a lie for the past three years just to keep myself from coming to the same conclusion over and over again. Because not wanting to let myself love anyone else was only an excuse I could use to keep loving him. Because even when I had told myself that I could live without him enough times to almost believe it, it had been nothing close to the truth.

I was only me when I was with him. My life was not worth living if he wasn't part of it. It really was that simple, but to admit it, was the same to admit defeat and let him do with me anything he wanted. To admit it would give him every reason he had to love me, and then break me when he was done.

So, did he deserved a second chance? I didn't know, but I still wanted to give it to him. Was I going to, even if it meant I could end up at a darkest place than before? For the sake of my sanity, No.

I had to do what I thought I had done already, and let him go, for both of our sakes. Because I knew, deep inside, despite all the things he said in his letter or at the wedding, we would end up hurting each other one way or another, and as unbearable as being hurt was, it wouldn't compare to knowing I hurt him.

"Rosie?"

I closed my eyes and sighed heavily so I could keep the tears from falling down, before I replied to whoever was at the other side of the door.

"Come in."

I heard the door getting opened and light footsteps of the carpet. I opened my eyes to catch a glimpse of raven hair, before I felt extra weight on the bed.

"You have got to get out of here," I heard Al say just as he fell back onto the mattress and laid beside me.

"I know."

"Have you decided what to do now?" Al asked a few seconds later.

"Not really."

"Has he made an appearance yet?"

I didn't have to ask him whom he had meant, because I already knew, he couldn't be speaking about Claude.

"No," I lied.

The letter I clutched inside my closed fist had nothing to do with Albus. It barely had anything to do with me. I had made my mind, and Al didn't have to know, no one did for that matter.

"Why don't you write to him?" my cousin asked, after he apparently, decided to believe Scorpius had nothing to say to me. "I'm sure he's just waiting for you to get your thoughts in order."

I didn't reply to that. Our relationship had just gotten back to its former glory, before Claude had walked into my life, and I didn't want to ruin it. I knew that telling him what I had been thinking before he appeared would only put unnecessary strain in our recently healed connection. He was on Scorpius' side for some reason completely unknown to me. He would disagree with me on whatever I decided until I gave Scorpius another chance. I knew, eventually, Albus would realize the blonde wizard would never return, and by then he'd have to live with it. But, as of now, I just wanted us to remain fine, even if it was for a little while longer.

We spent a few more minutes in silence, probably five or six, before he sighed heavily and stood up from the bed.

I heard his footsteps against the carpeted floor of my teenage years bedroom, and wondered where exactly was he heading. I heard the doors of my closet getting opened and suddenly a rough fabric landed on my face.

"There," Albus said, throwing something else at me as he spoke.

"What-?"

"Get dressed" he ordered, inpatient.

"Why?" I asked as I pulled the stripped blouse he threw at me off my face.

"I'm not letting you drown yourself in depression," he told me firmly, before kicking a pair of shoes from the door over to the edge of the bed. "Normally I would just leave you to deal with your own issues, as you've done your entire life. But this time, I won't. This time I'm helping you whether you want me to or not... very much like you would normally do for someone else."

I stared at my cousin, sitting on my bed, as he opened another door of the closet and threw a beige coat at my direction. I smiled as I watched him gather an outfit for me, and felt this warm feeling inside that normally I would make someone feel, but very little feel myself.

Gratitude.

"You better be downstairs in ten," Albus then said walking over to the bedroom door.

"I need to shower," I replied, still smiling at him and feeling my eyes water ever so slightly.

He stared at me with a serious expression before he smiled back at me and humoured me.

"Twenty then."

**.**

**OOO**

**.**

"Al, Rosie, over here!"

I looked over where the voice that called Al and I came from. I saw Teddy's tall frame waving at us as he smiled a smile that according to uncle Harry was just like his father's. Al and I walked through the busy restaurant over to the table where the older brunette sat with a young, silvery blonde girl at his side.

Soon, my cousin and I sat ourselves at the table Teddy had reserved for us four. I looked around the restaurant as I sat. It was rather new, it had opened recently, but I didn't know exactly when. It was a lot cosier than most of the establishments at Diagon Alley. The floors weren't covered with stone, but wood. Most of the walls were also wooden, except for the only one that face the street, that one was one huge glass. There was a small bar near the kitchen and many tables around the space. The cloths were of a light beige and the chairs were puffy and of the same colour.

Teddy and Albus greeted each other as I scanned the place briefly, then Teddy greeted me while Al bid hello at young Nymphadora. I looked at her just as her deep brown eyes turned to me. She kept quiet for a short while, before finally speaking to me.

"Rose," she nodded at me coldly.

"Nymphadora," I nodded back, trying not to smile too widely.

"Long time no see," the five year-old reprimanded me.

"I know," I replied, looking away from her bright, mad eyes. "I'm sorry."

Throughout the past three months, I had been pretty much hiding under a rock, not really wanting to face the world just yet. My family understood and most of the children, little as they were didn't even now that I had been missing. Dora and Remus Jr. were the only ones old enough, at seven and five, to really understand that time was passing by and I had kept myself away. But Dora, was the one whom I dared say, liked me the most. So my going missing was not something she would let slide easily. I just hoped she hadn't felt abandoned during my absence.

And even if she had, I would make sure she never felt that way again.

I was done healing myself. I was over the whole 'my life sucks' ordeal. I was over my bad fortune and was finally in peace with my life and the things I had to get done in order to move forward. I no longer cared for what had happened back in September with Claude. I didn't mind people talking about it anymore. I found it in myself to ignore the nosey witches and wizards who were too busy not minding their own issues to mind mine.

The only thing I wasn't completely sure about was Scorpius and my feelings for him. I knew what I had to do, but I just couldn't quite bring myself to deal with that just yet. Almost a month had passed since I got his letter and decided not to reply. He didn't write again, and I almost wish he had, so I could do something about it then. But I realized that ending things couldn't be done in a letter. I couldn't just scribble on a piece of old parchment and hope he'd be satisfied with that. I knew I had to speak to him personally, but I wasn't sure I wanted to do that... Well, no, I knew for certain that I didn't want to do it, but I had to... eventually.

"Daddy, I don't want any of a this," Dora suddenly whined.

I hadn't realized a menu had appeared in front of each one of us and that everyone at the table was busy thinking what to order.

"But, honey, this is what they have," Teddy replied to his daughter with a gentle voice.

"Can't we go elsewhere?" the little girl insisted.

Teddy looked at her and I could see in his face that it was hard for him to say no to her. It probably was because the resemblance the five year-old had with her mother. So, he just looked at her intently, knowing that it would work as well as the word would. Nevertheless, Dora knew just how manipulating she could be, so she turned her browns eyes at me and begged me with them just as Teddy looked away, back to his menu.

"I can take her down the street for something else," I replied and gained a huge smile from the young blonde.

"It's ok, Rosie, you don't have to," Teddy replied, and instead of looking at his child, he looked at me, as if I was a kid he had to discipline as well.

"I want to go with Rosie," Dora then said with a small, sweet, melting voice.

Merlin, she was good.

"Fine, but no ice cream before the meal," Teddy gave up after a few seconds, but still glared at me slightly. "I mean it."

After surviving Teddy's warning, Dora and I walked out of the busy restaurant hand in hand. As she expressed how much she wanted to have a simple fish with chips, all I could do was to smile at the way she seemed to not be mad at me anymore. I guessed that was part of a child's grace, grudges are never that serious and they don't last long.

We walked down the street to the old Leaky Cauldron, where, despite the looks of the establishment, Dora seemed to feel rather at home. Maybe it was the fact that the bar tender, Tom, would give her all she asked for or because it looked like a haunted house to her, I didn't know, but she loved that place.

"Rosie, look, I have your nose now!" the five year-old said loudly fifteen minutes later, as she bit down on a chip.

After ordering the child's meal, we had sat by a window to wait. Not long after, Nymphadora was showing off what she had inherited from her paternal grandmother. She, very often, would change her appearance when she went out with me. It didn't really matter to me when she did that, but she sure got a kick out of making people think she was my daughter. I didn't care for what people thought of it really, if it amused her, then I was amused as well.

"I can change my eyes too, look!" she said, showing me how much better she had gotten with the practice.

I applauded her for the accuracy as she kept eating at the same time she was trying to talk to me. I smiled as I watched her. She really had gotten better. Her nose was no longer the shadow of Teddy's, it was just like mine, proportionally smaller, according to the size of her face. She used to have trouble changing her eyes the last time I'd seen her, but she now mastered it. They look as hazel as mine, but she kept the slight downward shape of Victorie's eyes.

"I can't change the colour of my hair yet, though," she was saying eating a few more chips,her fish barely touched. "Grandpa told me that daddy had been born with blue hair."

"I love your hair the way it is," I replied to the blonde little girl.

As I spoke, I felt this tug inside and I almost let my eyes water. I hadn't noticed before, but with her eyes coloured as mine and her silvery blonde hair, still silvery, I couldn't help but see in her what Astoria II would have looked like.

"Done!" Dora suddenly said, making me jump in surprise.

I glanced briefly at her plate and noticed her fish as untouched as it had been since the last time I checked, and looked at her intently, just as Teddy would. She gave me a tiny smile, asking for some complicity.

"Let's go get you that ice cream," I gave in about three seconds later.

I knew she hadn't had a proper meal, but it was just this once. I usually wouldn't spoiler her this much, but I hadn't seen her in a long time, I owed her.

She beamed at me, slid down her chair and ran to the back of the establishment, where the bricked wall that led back to the Diagon Alley was. She stayed there waiting for me as I paid the bill and thanked Tom, the bartender, for the service.

I made my way to the back, where Dora was still standing, eyeing me to go faster. I smiled down at her just as she took hold of my hand and motioned me to open the portal. I took my wand out, amused at her impatience, and tapped it to the wall. After a couple of seconds the doorway was opened and Dora and I walked back into the busy wizarding street. We walked slowly through the mass of people hurriedly making last Christmas errands, while the girl wondered out loud which flavour ice cream she would like to get.

Soon, we walked into Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour and I got a chocolate cone for Dora. I would have like to get one for myself, but I hadn't had lunch with her, and it wouldn't have been wise. I could almost hear my mother in my head, telling me that such behaviours where dangerous to one's health.

I glanced at my wrist clock just after I paid the girl that gave Dora the ice cream. An hour and a half had passed. If I remembered correctly, Teddy had to leave early and him and Al were very likely to have eaten already. After the girl by the bar gave me the change, I got hold of Dora's hand and smiled as she talked about who knew what.

She was a very talkative little girl... a lot like me when I was that age. Now I almost understood why my dad would often not pay that much attention to the things I said when I was younger. It seemed it took a chatter to deal with another, and my dad, he wasn't that talkative to begin with.

We walked out of the colourful establishment and down the street back to the new restaurant where the boys must have still be. We walked slowly, as if we had all the time in the world. Everyone around us passed much faster, running late to who knew where. I glanced at the displays of each of the stores we passed by as Dora ate her ice cream quietly. Not really that interested in the stores, I soon glanced ahead and got a glimpse of silvery blonde hair.

He was staring back at me, with slight shock painting those dashing features of his. His silver eyes then went down at my side and took a good look at Dora, who was now informing me her cone had fallen from her hand at our sudden stop. His eyes came back to my face and I could swear they had gotten softer compared to the last glance he gave me, two seconds prior.

I watched him walk slowly towards us, and for a second I wanted to walk to him as well, but didn't. Something had pinned my feet to the ground.

"Hi," he said standing five feet from us, at a save distance.

"Hi," I replied with just a string of voice.

We kept quiet for, what to me, seemed like a really long time. But it must have been only a few seconds before a small voice broke the silence.

"Hello."

Scorpius and I, both, looked down at the five year-old that had now let go of my hand and was tugging at the cuff of his cloak, demanding attention.

"Nice to see you again, Nymphadora," he said and bent his knees, ducking to her height level.

"You too," she replied, walking in closer between his parted legs and touching her index finger to his cheek.

I tried not to make a sound at the gesture, but I could almost feel my heart getting smaller.

Nymphadora had only been two years old when she first had met Scorpius. As a baby, she had been a very loving kid. She used to like to be hold, it never mattered who did it, she liked it. However, she never opened her arms for Scorpius to carry her. She would clutch to me and stare at him impassively, never smiling, never crying. It had been as if she was evaluating him. But the very few times she had interacted with him, it had always been the same way, touching her small hand to his face. In a way, I always thought that was just the way she showed appreciation for strangers. But now I wondered if she had thought of Scorpius as a stranger at all. If she had, she wouldn't have remembered him, nor the way she used to interact with him.

I watched as Dora kept poking lightly Scorpius' cheek. I watched him smile all the while, until she dropped her hand, smiled warmly and then came back to me, stretching her arms, asking me to carry her, like she hadn't done in almost a year.

"We were off to Two Summers & A Spring, Al and Teddy must be waiting for us," I told Scorpius as I bent over to pick Dora up in my arms.

"Oh," was all he said.

I could see a glimpse of doubt in his handsome face and wondered if he was wondering the same thing. Had that been an invitation or an excuse? Then, I realized, I, myself, didn't know.

"Would you like to come?" Dora then asked, her still hazel eyes buried on the other blonde's face.

"I'd love to, but-" he glanced at me briefly and turn his eyes back to the child, smiling in apology. "I probably shouldn't."

"I insist," the five year-old replied, and I almost felt shock at her oversized determination.

We kept quiet for a little while, neither one of us wanting to reject the little one. I stared at the blonde wizard and saw him as uncomfortable as he had never been in front of me. I wondered if I looked just as awkward to him, and then realized it didn't really matter.

The awkwardness was only result of the things that had happened, it was normal, but it didn't have to stay that way.

"I'm sure the boys would like to see you," I then spoke, fully believing that they would.

He stared at me doubtfully for a couple of seconds before smiling slightly and replying.

"Alright... Alright then."

"Scorpius, hi," a very surprised Teddy said back at the restaurant, where Dora and I had left him and Al.

"Teddy," Scorpius smiled at my cousins, shaking their hands and hugging them. "Albus."

"How have you been?" Al asked as we all sat at the table that still had the remains of their lunch.

"Fine," Scorpius replied not quite convincingly.

"Haven't seen you in a while." Teddy said, his deep brown eyes glancing warmly at the blonde wizard.

"Yeah."

I stayed quiet as I watched the three wizards talking among themselves, and oddly enough it didn't feel as awkward as I had thought it would. Although I should have known that already. Scorpius had been one of us since we were seventeen. Whether I liked it or not, he would never be out of place with Teddy, Al, James, Hugo, or any of us for that matter. Even to Dora he wasn't a stranger, to her he was just another relative.

"I didn't know you were still in England," Al was saying just as I started paying attention to the conversation once again.

"Just for the Holidays, I'm moving back to Ireland in January," the silvery blonde wizard said.

"You are?" I couldn't help myself.

"Yes," he replied after a second or two, his silver eyes finding my hazel ones.

We stared at each other for what, again, felt like an eternity.

He was going back to whatever retirement he had had there. He was leaving again, and for some reason I felt the urge to beg him not to. It wasn't my petition to make, however. If he wanted to go, I had to let him. I lost all claim on him the moment he asked me to take him back and I didn't do anything about it. I knew I couldn't though.

It wasn't fair to him to ask him to wait for me to get over things. He couldn't just put his life in hold so I could make my mind. Which I had anyway.

I hated to think of it that way, but we had rushed into things too soon. We hadn't given ourselves time to think things through. We had planned a life that we were too young to be sure that was what we wanted. I could tell he knew that too, I could see it in his face. And even though there were many things still left to say, I thought it was best for us to leave everything as it was. And farewell each other, at least, on terms that could promise a friendship in due time.

"It's late, and I have to get the little one home, she's got a playdate," Teddy then broke the silence.

"A play date?" Al asked, all tension oblivious to him now.

"Don't look at me like that. It was Vic's idea, not mine."

Teddy stood up and took his now snoozing daughter in his arms. He reached into his pocket and and took a few silver and golden coins out. He placed the galleons and sickles onto the table and they disappeared immediately. Al gave him an annoyed look for paying the lunch in his entirety and started to get up as well.

"You're leaving too?" Scorpius asked, and for a second his eyes seemed to show a faint trace of panic.

"I should. Got some presents to wrap up," my cousin replied, winking at the blonde wizard briefly.

That _brat_.

A few seconds later, Scorpius and I found ourselves completely alone. We kept quiet for a while, and all the time I was thinking of some excuse to get up and also leave.

"Have you eaten yet?" I heard him ask, just as I decided that I could just walk out, no excuse given.

"No," I replied too soon for it to be a cool answer. "Have you?" I tried disguising my anxiety.

"No."

We stayed quiet a few seconds more, staring at each other every now and then, waiting for two menus to appear out of thin air. I focused on the menu before me as soon as it appeared so I wouldn't ask myself what was I doing sitting here. I tried not paying attention at my growing anxiety, or my faster-beating heart. I tried concentrating on what I wanted to order, but even when I read the same plates over and over again, I still didn't know what they were.

I peaked slowly over the cardboard I held. Scorpius was casually reading his menu, as if he was on a lunch date with his father or some other person he had no unsettled business with. I tore my eyes off his always-perfect face and back to the menu. Minutes passed slowly before he spoke.

"I feel like having pasta, is it good?"

"I wouldn't know, I've never tried it," I replied feeling my cheeks starting to burn, and hoping he wasn't looking at me.

Silence fell upon us once more, but was soon interrupted. Scorpius told the empty air what he wanted and then looked back at me. I didn't say anything, as I was too unsettled to even have an appetite anymore. Still, he ordered for me, the same thing he was having. I smiled at him lightly, remembering all those dates that we would order the same thing.

After that, we remained silent yet again. I tried browsing my brain for something to say, anything really to make me feel less like a child that plans to get away from her parents as soon as they're looking elsewhere.

"So, are you still wasting your time?" I asked, remembering the last thing he told me, three months ago.

"No, not anymore," he smiled, his eyes buried on the table.

I stared at him as he kept his eyes out of my reach. I hadn't noticed, drown in anxiety, that he too seemed to feel uncomfortable at such awkward situation.

"I got accepted back into the IPQU," he said after a few seconds, fidgeting with the cuffs of his leather jacket.

"You did? Congratulations."

I asked myself if I should stand up and congratulate him properly, but that was probably not really appropriate for me to do. So I just gave him a wholehearted smile.

"Thank you."

We didn't say anything else for the next five minutes or so. The reason for his silence was something I was oblivious to. My silence... it was filled with questions and speculations.

"So that's the reason," I asked and deep inside I knew he'd know what I was talking about, without asking me.

"Yes."

I could feel his gaze on my face, but I couldn't bring myself to look up, back into his silver eyes. I opened my mouth to ask something that had been eating me alive since I realized he wasn't coming back to me three years ago, but a plate of pasta appeared in front of me, giving me an excuse not to ask. An excuse to keep the question unasked, unanswered, almost non-existent.

I didn't wait for him to start eating, I just dug in, giving myself something to do other than stare at him, than focus on him.

We ate quietly, and on my part, rather quickly. Soon, but not soon enough, we were both done with the meal. The plates disappeared and I took out a few sickles as soon as the table was cleared. I didn't give Scorpius any chance to pay for my lunch, or to ask if I wanted dessert.

I knew I had to say something someday, regarding the events that led to the discomfort I felt around him now. I knew I had to explain myself, and ask him to stop insisting. I knew I had to tell him to get over it and go live his life, especially now, since it seemed to have gotten better. But I couldn't. I knew I had to say goodbye for good, but I found myself unable to even look at him in the eye again, let alone tell him things that I knew would hurt us both.

So I meant to stand up then, and give myself space to breathe and think properly, before putting the axe against our necks. Still there was something bothering me, something I needed to know, whether he wanted to answer or not.

"Where- Where were you before?" I asked, looking down at my hands as he took a few sickles out of his trousers pockets.

He didn't reply right away. He first placed the money on table and waited for it to disappear.

"Still in Ireland," he sighed after a few seconds. "The muggle part of it."

I tried not letting my heartbreak show on my face, but it proved to be hard.

To know he had been there, still so close and yet decided to keep me in the dark was a feeling I wished I never had to feel again. I even wished I hadn't had to feel it for a first time, but I had asked. I had unleash it, I had opened the can of worms.

"What were you doing there?"

"Hiding," he simply replied.

I found the courage to look up then, just to see him looking away from me, as if he felt ashamed of his actions.

"From me?" I knew it was a selfish thing to ask, but I couldn't help myself.

"No," he answered firmly, but still looking at his hands.

"From what then?"

"Reality, I think."

I tried not to take his answer personally. I tried not holding anything against him, but it was too hard. He told me he hadn't run from me, but I was still part of the reality that made him go away. So at the end, it did have something to do with me. And that was something I wasn't prepared for.

"It's late," I said, not bothering to even take a look at my clock to confirm such statement "I should go."

"Wait," he said, standing up a second after I had. "Would you like to go for a walk, or something?"

I looked at him. His face wasn't surprised, it was almost as if he had expected me to react the way I had.

Well, he probably had. He knew me better than I knew myself at times.

"Please," he insisted, seeing as I didn't say anything, but I didn't move from there either.

"Alright."

We walked out of the restaurant quietly, at a save distance from each other. We walked down, a now less busy street, just when orange ink was starting to spread through the skies. I hadn't realized the afternoon was almost over.

"You never replied," I heard him say quietly, almost as if he had spoken to himself, instead of me.

I didn't reply right away. I was searching in my head for an excuse to explain my lack of response to his letter. But I came up with nothing at all.

"I didn't know how to," I said, not lying, not quite telling the truth either.

What was I supposed to say anyway? 'I just thought that ending everything was something I should do in person'?

I suddenly stopped within my tracks, and from the corner of my eye, watched Scorpius stop as well, a yard ahead, looking back at me.

I had suddenly realized that that was it. This was what I had told myself I needed to do. He was here, in front of me, out of sheer luck... And I had to make him go away.

I had to tell him now, whether I wanted to or not. Whether I was prepared for it or not. Because I wouldn't have another chance. He was going back.

He was going... back.

"I'm truly sorry, about everything, Rose, I am," I heard him say, but refused to look at him.

Did I really have to tell him that I decided to let him go, when he was going anyway?

I realized then, that he wasn't waiting for my reply anymore. He had waited long enough. He had decided that whatever I had to say had been said through silence. He was giving up on me once more, this time for good apparently.

I wondered the reason I felt my eyes water. I wondered why I felt like my heart had been ripped off yet again. I felt as if everything was crumbling around me. What a horrible feeling this was.

I finally looked forward to his silvery existence as I felt the tears starting to fall. I felt as if I was losing him all over again, and this time it was _my_ fault. I felt like I had gone back in time three years and was staring at the empty spot by the door. I wondered why he never came back, and despite feeling like I was being broken into a million pieces, I decided that I needed to know at least that much.

"Why?"

He took a few seconds to collect himself, before replying.

"Because I thought you weren't coming back," he said, knowing perfectly what I was asking.

"Why did you think that?"

"I'm not sure."

"Did you really think that lowly of me?" I tried holding back the tears, but it was just too hard.

"No, not all," he replied firmly, taking a step towards me. "I just thought- I just thought that you knew you deserved better than that."

"I deserved for you to _try_, Scorpius," It broke my heart to say it out loud, knowing it was the truth I had been trying to keep myself from stumbling upon for the past years.

"I know that now."

I felt this sudden urge to yell at him. To tell him that I had cried his absence for months. That I had dreamed about waiting for him. That I had dreamed about him coming back, that I still did. But nothing came out. The feeling of loss was so great and so overwhelming, it shut my mouth closed.

"I'm sorry," he said, sighing in what felt like desperation.

"Sorry's not good enough," I finally made myself say.

Though I wished not to. I wanted so badly to tell him that I was just bluffing, but deep inside I knew I wasn't. Nothing he would ever say, would make everything go away. What we both had done to each other was unforgivable.

I tried to walk away then, but his voice booming throughout the now empty street didn't let me.

"I was devastated!" he screamed, in a desperate attempt to make me stay.

"So was I!" I turned around and yelled back at him, tears falling uncontrollably down my cheeks.

"No, you don't get it!"

"Then, enlighten me!"

"Every inch of that place was filled of memories of you! I couldn't stay there! It drove me insane!"

He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. He sighed tiredly and closed his eyes in the most pain-filled expression I had ever seen on his face.

"Nothing made any sense without you there," he said with a string of voice. "Quidditch was a mere game. To eat, to sleep, to breathe, were nothing but empty actions. I couldn't live without you, I still can't."

"Then, why didn't you come sooner!" I yelled at him, knowing he didn't deserve to be yelled at anymore.

"Because I'm an idiot!" he said loudly, mad, though it seemed more like he was madder at himself than at me. "Because I'm the stupidest creature alive! Because no matter what I did or told myself, I always thought you'd be better off without someone like me!"

I watched him breathe heavily, with cheeks red with anger, his silver eyes burning, and let myself close my eyes and say out loud what would always be the truth.

"Yet, I can't live without you."

I turned around then, meaning to never turn back to him, to his face, to his apologies, to the desperate need I had to have him back.

But he didn't let me.

Before I could process what was happening, his hand closed forcefully around my wrist, he pulled me to him and swiftly closed the distance between us.

As soon as I felt his lips collide against mine, nothing made sense anymore. What I had thought had to be done had no meaning any longer. The reasons I had to walk away lost their validity. My determination to let him go vanished leaving no trace, as if it had never existed. My mind went blank and all I could think of was the feeling of familiarity, of belonging that he was bringing back to me.

His arms trapped me tightly, and even when it became hard to breathe, I didn't want him to let go. I let him kiss me passionately, I let myself kiss him back. I let all sense of rationality fly away. I let myself melt with him, and realized that nothing would ever compare to this. Nothing could ever really break us apart. We could both look for a thousand excuses to let each other go and 'be happy without the other', but that was what they were, excuses. Because when things felt this right, it had to mean that they _were_ right, as simple as that.

I suddenly felt the squeezing feeling of Disapparation and soon landed against something soft, while Scorpius and I still clinging to each other desperately.

He then broke away and I opened my eyes. He was lying on top of me, supporting himself on his elbows. One of his hands then came up to my face and he traced my jaw line lightly. He dragged his fingers along my neck to my collarbone, all the while still looking at me in the eye. He let his hand roam lower until it found my waist and rested there for a few seconds before his lips landed on my neck. He kissed me tenderly, his hair tickling my face, and now both of his hands, holding me as close to him as they could. I ran my hands through his soft hair and felt my heart start beating harder at the electrifying sensation it all made me feel.

His lips then left my neck and went back to mine. After that, the urge to have each other was too great for any more caresses.

I let him do whatever he wanted with me. He let me do whatever I wanted with him. We both let go of whatever we had told ourselves to keep us from ravaging each other at sight and made love like we had never had before.

I knew that the next day there would be consequences, worries, questions and very little answers, but it didn't matter to me. I was with whom I was meant to be, nothing else mattered, but him, us, just loving each other as much as our human condition would let us.


	6. Notthing But Us

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series, any its characters or settings, all you recognize belongs to J. K. Rowling.**

"**Nothing But Us"**

**.**

**Rose**

**.**

Very little times in my life had I had the determination or courage to do something not really caring for consequences. Very little times in my life had I not felt guilty for doing something I previously considered to be wrong. Very little times had I given into something I had convinced myself I wasn't going to do.

This particular morning was one of those very rare days that nothing mattered. Not what I had to face, not what I had to do, not what I had done. The only thing that mattered was the sleeping man beside me. His slow breathing, his closed eyes and long lashes, his pale cheeks and his silver hair falling innocently over his forehead.

I let my eyes roam his ever so gorgeous face. The slightly upward line by the corner of his pale red lips made it look like he was smiling in his sleep. His always straight, never expressive brows tilted up one tiny bit as well. His face looked like the most truthful description of innocent mockery. I ran my hand softly through his hair, tugging what I could behind his ear. I then touched my fingertips to his face slightly. I traced the outline of his squared jaw, to his soft cheeks, to the light lilac marks under his eyes, to his dandy nose and back to his jaw.

He was beautiful, simply beautiful.

I stared at him longingly, and realized that I had missed him more than I had bothered admitting to myself. I had almost forgotten what it was like to lay in his arms, what it was like to wake up to that handsome face of his every morning. To kiss his lips, his cheeks, to ruffle his silvery hair and be stared at by his icy silver eyes.

He opened his eyes just as I was thinking of their marvellous colour. He blinked slowly and moved his arms slightly, adjusting himself to me and went back to sleep. I had forgotten what it was like to hold someone that fit perfectly with me.

I buried my face in the crook of his neck carefully, to not wake him. I breathe his so extinctive smell. He still smelled of his cologne, the very same he had worn since we were teenagers, sweet and woody. I closed my eyes and focused on every inch my skin that touched his, recognizing his warmth, engraving it on my brain and wishing I never had to lose it.

**.**

**OOO**

**.**

_Will be back at 7 o'clock. We'll go out._

_Love you_.

Those were the only words he had bothered scrambling on an old piece of parchment before he hurried himself out.

I stared at his handwriting and couldn't help but feel unpleased with it, considering what I had been staring at before I had fallen asleep again. It was quite disappointing to wake up a second time to an empty bed, and for a few seconds I panicked, thinking that it all must have been a dream. I then, had found the note and calmed down, though I wished he had stayed.

I tried not to psych myself out and hold anything against Scorpius. He probably had things to do, and unlike the last time, he was coming back. Besides, after the night before there was no doubt in my mind that he loved me still, enough to never hurt me again.

I set down the note on one of the bedside tables, next to the single photograph that occupied it. My heart skipped a beat when I recognized it. It was a rather old picture, taken one Christmas that Scorpius and I had been shopping at the Outline, back in the Dome. We were looking for baby clothes as Teddy's eldest, Remus Jr., had been born not long before. That day we had spent five hours talking by the fireplace. We had settled on having four children, three girls and a boy, and decided what to name them. We even talked about what their personalities would be like and all the adventures they would go through when they got to Hogwarts.

I felt my eyes water as I kept staring at the picture. I reached for the sheets to cover myself, even though there was no one to see me naked, and leaned forward to take the photograph in my hands. I stared at my younger self smile in a way that I couldn't remember ever smiling like again. I then turned to the smiling young man beside me, and smiled back at him, at his happiness, at their innocent bliss. After a few seconds, I placed the picture back where it belonged and wondered if this time around Scorpius and I could make that same happiness happen, and more importantly, if we would be able to make it last.

I looked around where I was and a smile made its way through my lips almost instantly. I hadn't bothered looking around at the room last night; Scorpius' presence had been too distracting. I hadn't noticed he had brought me to a place I never thought I'd see again.

Our old bedroom looked exactly like it used to almost four years ago, as if time hadn't passed, as if it had frozen in time; the blonde wizard must have taken everything out of the boxes I had stored them in and placed all of it back to where it belonged.

Without thinking, almost as if it still was a routine, I took the shirt Scorpius had been wearing the night before and threw it on before I climbed out of bed and walked out of the bedroom. I made my way downstairs slowly, while I touched my fingers to the soft wood of the stair's rail. I engraved every thump my feet provoked against the wooden floor, and let all the good memories of our time here flood my head. Once I reached the first floor, I dared explore the place that once had been my beloved home, in search of what, I wasn't sure.

I walked over to the kitchen to steal an apple or maybe a tangerine. Scorpius liked tangerines, he probably had a few. As I stepped in, the sunlight welcomed me through open shades. The windows were shut close, keeping the December breeze away, unable to touch the warm inside of the flat. The kitchen looked exactly like the last time I had seen it, clean, neat, in order… The same order I, very compulsively, had settled even before we got all of our supplies many years ago. I couldn't believe he remembered where it all went. Absolutely everything was where I had left it before Al's wedding, not one vase, not one glass, not even the forever untouched coffee machine we had gotten out of a whim, was out of place.

I walked further inside, up to the table, where a big green bowl sat by the centre, full of tangerines. When this was my home, there was a lot more to choose from, now, it reflected the sole owner's tastes. I took one and, tip toing slightly for an unknown reason to me, I walked outside to the living room. I stood by the door way, tangerine in hand, but couldn't dare to sit anywhere.

That living room had been the setting for the nightmares that had haunted me for many nights. That fireplace was the only thing that I had stared at while I had waited for him to come back. Everything about that room was filled with sad memories and lost hope. I stared at every inch of that placed that had kept me awake, lost, miserable, and felt my eyes water. This living room had been a prison cell to me, and I felt as if I was an orphan that had come back to the orphanage and had been forced to remember the bitter feeling that place had plagued me with.

I turned my back quickly to the room and walked away, not wanting to remind myself of the millions of tears I had cried in that place. I walked over to my former study, holding back a fresh set of tears and breathing profoundly, to calm myself. The doors were shut and I wondered if this room had also undergone the restoration Scorpius had performed on the entire flat, or if he had left it as trashed as I had.

I guessed I understood if the blonde wizard couldn't find it in himself to fix the damage I had done to this room. This place, hiding behind a pair of still closed doors, had been mine and mine only. It had been the place where I could shut the entire world out of, and concentrate on myself. It had been the only place I had been selfish enough to keep him out of.

I placed each hand on a knob and tried to open the room, but something within me wouldn't let me.

I had been a terrible, terrible girlfriend to him, hadn't I? I had been such a hypocrite, pretending that he had to include me in everything when I hadn't really cared if he did or not. I had shut him out. It all had been my fault, it was really that simple. I lied to Claude, to my family, to myself. Scorpius hadn't stopped trying, I had. I had never been as invested in our relationship as I should have. This flat, this huge flat, was more than big enough for both to share space and still keep our own, and still, I had been selfish enough to take an entire room and claim it for myself.

I let my hands drop from the knobs, disappointed at myself and all the things I had done throughout a large portion of my life, disappointed at the choices I had made and the way I had handled things in the past.

I meant to turn around and go back upstairs, when a voice I hadn't heard in my life, spoke, stopping me right then and there.

"You may be thinking about it too much, young Lady," I turned to see a brunette witch say as she smiled warmly at me.

I could feel an uncomfortable tug in the pit of my stomach as I recognized the woman. She was holding a small light blue journal while a silvery blonde baby with silver eyes sat on her lap and played with a strand of her long dark brown hair.

Astoria Malfoy winked at me while she kept smiling, and then, stopped acknowledging me. She went back to her son, and played silently with him, just like the last time I had seen her.

I stood where I was, unable to move one muscle, still staring at most important woman that had ever existed to Scorpius Malfoy. I couldn't quiet tell what was keeping me from looking away, but whatever it was I was feeling, it was incredibly overwhelming. I felt my eyes water while I imagined the blonde baby in the picture, twenty-four years older, deciding to enlarge such a memory and hanging it up.

He must have grown a lot in the past months.

If there had been something I wish I could have helped him with since his mother died, it was to get over it. I had tried plenty of times and failed miserably. It wasn't until I saw my own father start to slip away from my grasp that I understood, one could never get over a death just like that, specially someone's that had been so close, so important, someone whom one had the right to know for longer than twelve years.

I smiled at the picture, even though neither Mrs Malfoy, nor Scorpius himself were paying attention to me. I was glad he had found it in himself, not to get over it, but at least to acknowledge her existence beyond memory, beyond stories, and glorify her through that picture, like she had always been in his mind.

I wondered how hard it had been, and later realized how much of an idiot I was.

'You may be thinking about it too much, young Lady'

Mrs Malfoy was right. I was making a bomb out of a small sparkle. If Scorpius had had the strength to take that picture of his mother out of the album he had kept it hidden in and display it in his home, then I could walk into that study. I owed everything we had had that much, the same way he had owed what he did to his mother.

I gave the witch one last smile I knew she wouldn't acknowledge and turned back around. I placed a hand on each knob and pulled the doors open. What meet me at the other side of the doorway was something I hadn't expect.

The study looked like no time had passed for the most part. My books were where I had left them long ago, no sheet of dust to cover them. The furniture was placed around the room in the same manner I had arranged them back when we first got them. It all looked like it did before I had taken the life Scorpius and I had shared and stuff it away in boxes and hid them here. All except one thing.

The coffee table I used to keep empty was occupied to the last inch. There was one single white rose in a thin vase of glass at the middle, surrounded by, at least thirty portrait frames.

I walked slowly towards the table, feeling this tugging sensation pulling at me. I kneeled in front of the whole arrangement and felt my pulse at the base of my neck.

Every one of the pictures encased in the frames where the only things left from the time Scorpius and I had shared together.

His first birthday at the flat. Our first Chirstmas by ourselves. His father's first visit. My family's first dinner over. His first Quidditch win in the Ireland Team. My first healing award. Every single vacation shot we took. Every memory we chose to make immortal was there.

Then I found one I didn't even remember. It had been taken on our graduation from Hogwarts. I believed Lily had taken it before she had hurried us back to the castle to take the flu network to my uncle Harry's and Auntie Ginny's home.

I took the frame in my now shaking hands as I felt myself close to tears once again today. I stared down at myself, seventeen years old, looking up at whom was the love of my life back then, and placed the picture back on the table after a minute or two.

I stood up more determined than ever.

Yes, I had been an awful person to love. Yes, I had made many mistakes. Yes, it had all been my fault. But if I had done at least something right in this lifetime besides never given up in my father, it was to love the blonde wizard who had bothered loving me.

It wasn't worth anything to ponder on the things I had done to him, or the things I hadn't done to save us. It was absolutely pointless to think of all the things I wanted to change from the past. All that really mattered was what I was willing to do now, for him, for us, for myself.

I had gotten him back last night, not because I had managed anything. He had been the one to take the first step; he had been the brave one. It was my turn to take a stance. It was time I showed some courage as well. It was time I showed him just how much he meant to me.

He still was the love of my life, and he would never stop being so.

**.**

**OOO**

**.**

"Rose?" I heard from the living room as I flickered my wand around, chopping onions and stirring a mushroom cream for supper.

"I'm in the kitchen!" I replied to the blonde wizard who wasn't at sight just yet.

"What are you doing?"

I had expected him to come closer and maybe hold me hello, but he didn't, and that made me feel quite uneasy, and frankly, slightly stupid.

I turned around to meet his gaze and smiled awkwardly.

"Surprise," I said, raising my arms a little in what must have looked like a really cliché gesture from an old muggle movie with unrealistic perceptions of a man's and a woman's role in 'modern' life.

"I-" "I wrote you a note," Scorpius said, still at the door, not leaning onto it, clearly as uncomfortable as I felt.

I wasn't sure why, but I felt this coldness, this distance oozing from him that reminded me of those days back at Hogwarts when we barely knew each other and words didn't come as easy as they should.

"Yes, I know you wanted to go out," I said, breaking a silence that had started growing to be very unsettling. "But I thought that maybe we could have a nice dinner… here."

We stared at each other for a little while, right until the pot of hot water I had set up for tea was boiling.

I turned back to cooking while I listened carefully for him to say anything… anything at all.

Maybe I had gotten myself too excited about us, maybe all the damage I had done couldn't be repaired. Maybe this dinner was supposed to put an end to things and not clean the slate to start anew. Maybe I had tricked myself into believing that one night together could make everything better.

Maybe I was just a stupid little girl still in love with someone who had realized he was too good for her and the constant hurt she had put him through.

"Should I get some wine then?" I heard his voice just when my eyes were threatening to water.

"Sure," I replied, trying to hide my concern for this awkward, unrealistic feel between us.

"Red or white?" I heard him ask, closer to me this time.

"Whichever, really."

He didn't say anything else, he just opened the fridge and took a bottle of red wine. He walked over to where I was and leaned over to take a couple of wine glasses that sat on the top shelf right in front of me.

I tried to hold back a sigh of relief when I felt his warmth against me, his arm brushing mine while he took the glasses down. He stood there for a second too long, his chest pressed against my back and with no warning, planted the softest of kisses on my shoulder before walking out of the kitchen and to the dining room.

I turned to look at him from the kitchen still. I watched him place a glass of wine next to the plates I had set up earlier. I watched him open the wine bottle; he served himself a bit and drank up, fast and steady. I watched him put the glass down, uneasy, and scanned the table with those beautiful silver eyes of his. I wondered what he was thinking and felt slightly selfish for doing this to him. But I had to. If we had gone out, there would be no options for him. I set up this trap so he could say 'no' if he wished.

I turned back to making dinner and tried not to think of what I had to do later. I waved my wand around, trying to focus only on one task at the time. Roast the chicken. Check the pie. Stir the pasta.

Soon, everything was on a plate by the table and the only thing that kept me from throwing up my insides was the meal I was shoving into my mouth.

As part of a very large family with very eccentric personalities, I was no stranger to awkward moments and still silences, but none of the terrifying dinners I had attended at home for the twenty-six years I had been alive, had ever been this uneasy.

"I need to show you something," I made myself say by the time Scorpius was finishing his dessert.

He looked up at me for the first time since we sat to eat an hour ago. He swallowed his last bite of pie hard. He nodded ever so slightly and I stood up to take an envelope for a tall table near the dining room. I walked over to him slowly and for the first time since I had gotten back to the flat this afternoon, I let myself think about how all this would end up.

I handed him the envelope and sat back down at the dining table, watching him carefully.

"What is this?" he asked, the envelope still closed at his hands.

"Open it."

He stared at me long, with a nervous twinkle in his eyes, before he did what I asked him to. He turned the envelope many times in his hands before he dared himself to open it, while I hold my breath.

He took several pages out and his eyes started scanning them rapidly.

I remembered then Maggie's question when I had asked for an official transferring request at St. Mungo's that same afternoon, back in England.

'Are you sure about this, Rosie?' she had wondered. I replied I didn't remember the last time I had been so sure of anything before. The head healer then singed my petition, and let me go.

I watched Scorpius as his shoulders lowered and the news sunk in. He looked away from the papers and back at me, his eyes cold for a reason I couldn't quite figure out. He looked back down, placing the papers back in the envelope and closing it before placing it onto the table.

"For the past three years I had convinced myself that my life was perfect, that I had everything I needed, but I was just lying to myself," I began, feeling like the transferring papers hadn't been enough to make him understand what I was trying to do. "The thing is, for some reason, I had set myself a balanced, well laid out life, with accomplishable goals and a happy ending." His eyes were settled upon mine, neutral, unchanging, as if he was trying to keep himself composed. "I never planned for any tragedies, misunderstandings or bumps along the road. My mother once told me that I could dream about perfection, since my entire family fought hard for me to be able to do so. I had planned on being with someone close to my family, like Nicolas Wood, not you. I had planned on marrying young, not wondering if my boyfriend was ever going to change his mind about marriage. I had planned on a life were I could get everything I wanted, not hope for the best."

I fought tears away, and willed my voice not to break.

"Now those plans just feel immature and rather self-centred."

His eyes then tore away from mine and he turned his face back, to where the door was. He looked like a child that had found himself lost and was looking for the nearest exit.

"What I'm trying to tell you is that…" I took a deep breath, not letting a sudden anger take over me, not letting this new disappointed feeling unable me to say what I needed to, "I love you."

His head snapped back and his silver eyes burned into mine like they have never before. The anger then made itself absent and fear replaced it. Suddenly I felt desperately afraid to lose him. To lose my dearest friend, my first love, my one and only.

"I love you, and I no longer care if you ever want to marry me, I don't care if I don't get the life I planned for. I don't care if we never get any further than this, and I don't care for all the things I once wanted," I took a deep breathe. "All I care about is you, and as long as I have you I'm happy for this lifetime and the next."

We stared at each other silently for a few seconds, as he processed what I had said and I waited for an answer.

But he didn't say anything.

He stood up, turned to the door and walked out to the flat's foyer.

My heart stopped and everything started to lose its edges as I watched him take his cloak from the coat rack.

He was going to leave… He was going to _leave me_, again.

I looked away then, and at my hands. I couldn't watch him go; I couldn't watch him walk away from me again. I refused to let his back be the last thing I'd ever see of him.

I tried not to feel heartbroken, I tried not to cry. I tried to breathe evenly. But my heart was racing too fast for that and my eyes were starting to water.

My biggest fear had come true regardless, I had lost him. I had harmed him too much for him to forgive me, for him to love me still.

"I love you too."

I looked up with my heart at my throat, thinking I'd find him by the door, saying those last words before disappearing on me again, but he was just three feet from me, looking down at me with a softness I hadn't seen for so long. A smile spread out slowly through his lips and he kneeled in front of me, while I still sat on my sad, depressing chair.

He took my hands in his and I then notice he was handing me something. He took his hands away and left a silver little box on mine.

I didn't have to open the box to know what was in it. I couldn't help the tears then.

He didn't let me cry for long though.

As soon as his lips found mine, nothing else mattered. Not the tears, not the past, not the box, not the ring I was sure sat inside it. Nothing but him and his kiss, and him and the fact that he loved me and I loved him.

Nothing but us.

**.**

**Scorpius**

**.**

It was a breezy September morning. The sky was barely twinkling with a brand new sunrise, painting the floor silver while the curtains danced at the pace of the early morning breeze.

I turned and tossed on my bed, my eyes falling upon a silvery blonde mass of hair and a dandy nose.

"Get up, pumpkin," I said sliding closer to the newest love of my life, and brushing my nose to her cheek.

"No," she replied sleepily.

"We'll be late, if you don't get up now."

"I don't really care."

"You said you wanted to go to work with me today."

"I changed my mind."

"Then I guess I'll tell Gus that we don't need an extra broom for today's practice."

She then popped her eyes open and two hazel marbles greeted me.

"Are you teaching me?" she asked, her eyes as wide as I had only seen them once, when she found out she was going to have a baby brother. "Are you finally teaching me to fly?"

"Yes," I replied and watched her pull the sheets off herself and stand up on the bed.

"Today?"

"Yes."

"A real broom?"

"Yes."

She stared at me with those big, hazel eyes her mother gave her for a few seconds, before a huge smile spread through her lips and she jumped off the bed.

"Careful!" I said loudly, though I didn't think she'd listen.

I smiled to myself for a minute or so, before I too, got out of the bed, and walked over to the bathroom.

After a few minutes I walked downstairs as while I summoned a jacket from the coat rack and. I put it on and walked to the kitchen.

Rose was already there, with a bright blue small bowl in her hand. She was in a purple dress and her hair was tied up in a loose braid. She looked much younger and I was reminded of our carefree days a school (as carefree as they could be, which wasn't that much anyway).

"Morning," I said, leaning onto the doorframe while she turned her face to me.

"Morning," she replied with a smile that had no comparison and then turned her hazel eyes to a rather quiet toddler sitting on a high chair b he counter.

I walked over to my wife and kissed her slightly on the lips as I stole the blue bowl from her hands.

"I'll take that," I told her smiling and she smiled back at me.

"Good morning, cherry pie," I greeted my two year old baby boy and watched him smile brightly at me.

"Here," I said in a voice as high as I could do.

I had never, and I repeat, never, had been one to indulge children or even tolerate them, but since the ginger toddler sitting in front of me was my son, I let myself behave like one of those annoying women that would hold onto our cheeks when you were younger just because they thought that being friends with your mother gave them the right to invade our personal space.

I watched my son eat his breakfast smiling still, with his bright blue eyes on me. He did justice to his grandfather, after whom he was named. His eyes were the same colour, his hair just as ginger and his entire expression, his behaviour, the way he reacted to things, made me think that when got older we'd receive as many letters from Hogwarts as I'm sure Rose's grandmother got when Ronald Weasley had been a teenager.

"Has Tori replied yet?" I asked Rose. Thinking of the Wizarding School made me wonder how my eldest was doing on her first day.

"Scorpius, I don't think she's even gotten it yet," she replied, sitting beside me and eying her child the same way I must have been.

I kept feeding Ronnie, not feeling satisfied with the answer I had gotten.

Unlike Frankie and Ronnie, Tori didn't look like either one of her parents. She didn't even look like she was our child at all. Nothing about her said Malfoy or Weasley.

No, she was all Greengrass.

She had dark hair and pale blue eyes, just like my mother. She even carried her name, Astoria. Even her personality was rather different from ours, though it was proper from a Weasley. She seemed to be more like her uncle Fred than any of the man's children, which was quite curious. She was, though, as responsible as her mother, but she didn't get much from me.

She was an outgoing kid, with a bright smile and a fascinating ability to make friends. She was outspoken and quite charming. The only thing we, as daughter and father, had in common, besides our last name, was Quidditch.

She was only eleven, but she had already decided that she wanted to be a professional Quidditch player, 'just like daddy', she had said one summer afternoon, when Al had been wondering what his niece wanted to be when she grew up. I must admit, I felt the kind of amusement I hadn't felt since I was seventeen, when Tori specified she wanted to be a beater and not a seeker, like her uncle was suggesting.

I smiled at the memory and looked out the window, hoping to see Baron's flying shape in the horizon, bringing a letter from Tori, telling just how much she missed home.

But there was nothing on sight but the pale cotton-ish forms of the clouds. I reminded myself ha it was quiet early still, she probably wasn't even awake yet.

"Mommy! Mommy!" I head suddenly a tiny voice say from the doorframe. "Toast!"

"Frankie," Rose said in a warning tone.

"Please!" the blonde six-year old said quickly with a cheeky smile.

"May I ask why is my precious, precious daughter, so loud this fateful morning?" Rose wondered out loud while she scooped her daughter in her arms and walked over to the counter as Frankie swung her little arms around her mother's neck.

"Daddy is teaching how to fly today!" she said excitedly as she pointed at me.

"He is?"

"Yes! Right?"

"Yes," I replied smiling at her hopeful gaze and gave Ronnie one last spoonful of pumpkin puree.

"Yes!"

I then stood up and took Ronnie out of the chair and held him. I rocked him softly and watched his mother and sister talk about reminding me of lunch by noon. I smiled at the scenery, and couldn't help but feel a sudden flutter in my chest that couldn't quite explain. I think it was some sort of overwhelming joy.

It was funny how things always worked out at the end. It had been twelve years since Rose and I had married, little over eleven since Tori was born, six since Frankie, and two since Ronnie joined us, but to me, all those years had gone in a blink of an eye. I felt as it was only yesterday that I had asked Rose to marry me, that beautiful evening when we finally admitted to ourselves and the other that we'd never survive apart.

Thinking back, it seemed silly to have fought about the things we fought so many years ago. But I now believed we needed to be apart and miss each other to truly understand that we were meant to be together. In a way, I felt grateful for our past separation, even though it had never been part of the plan; it managed to be essential for the survival of our relationship.

I watched Rose kiss Frankie's cheeks repeatedly as the child laughed, and smile to myself. I, then, felt a tiny hand rest on my face, and glanced down at Ronnie. He was sound sleep, his long pale lashes brushing my neck.

I smiled at him, even though he couldn't see me, and just as I had done with his two sisters, I silently promised him that nothing, absolutely nothing, would ever tear our family apart.


End file.
